Spending on mobile services up 4.2% Q3FY22, 8% YoY

Consumer spending on mobile services, post-GST regime coming into existence, rose 4.2 percent quarter on quarter in Q3FY22 and 8.0 percent year on year to Rs 420 billion, said brokerage house ICICI Securities.

It was aided by the 20-25 percent tariff hike taken in December 2021 by Airtel, Vodafone Idea, and Reliance Jio.

“Finally, consumer spend on telecom services has crossed pre-RJio levels (previous high was in Q1FY17),” said the brokerage house.

Post-paid net revenues rose 15.7 percent QoQ and 20.9 percent YoY on a rising subscriber base.

Prepaid net revenues grew 3.1 percent QoQ and 10.8 percent YoY as average revenue per user rose 5.7per cent QoQ and 13.7 percent YoY to Rs 108.

4G subscriber base dipped 0.6 percent QoQ (net loss: 4.5mn) to 802mn on clean-up of inactive subscribers by RJio.

RJio’s 4G subscribers market share shrank 90 basis points QoQ and 270 basis points YoY) to 55.9 per cent, while that for Bharti Airtel (Bharti) improved to 26.3 per cent, up 55 basis points QoQ and 255 basis points YoY.

Data usage grew 0.1 percent QoQ to 34,608 billion MB led by 4G segment growth of 0.4 percent QoQ to 34,014 billion MB (and contributed 98.3 percent to total data usage), the brokerage said in a report.

2G data volume dipped 25 percent QoQ and 3G data volume was down 9.1 percent QoQ. Free Press Journal