Telecom sector revenues are expected to hit a new high of $35 billion (\u20b93.12 lakh crore) this fiscal year as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio consolidate their positions and the industry absorbs last year’s tariff hikes with minimal subscriber churn. This follows a decade-long contraction after Jio’s entry, when industry revenues plunged to just $15 billion in FY19 amid intense price wars and mass consolidation.<\/p>\n
With another round of tariff hikes expected, industry revenues are projected to climb further to $39 billion in FY27, Jefferies estimates, signalling the strongest growth cycle in over a decade. “We expect sector revenues to rise at 14% CAGR to US$45bn over FY26-28E, with market share broadly stable,” the brokerage firm said. <\/p>\n
Sector average revenue per user or Arpu is also set to cross the \u20b9200 threshold this year – a key milestone that analysts say reflects a return to healthy, sustainable profitability over the next three years. Jefferies expects industry Arpu to reach \u20b9215 this fiscal and further to \u20b9266 by FY28.<\/p>\n
In the September quarter, sectoral revenue grew 1.4% sequentially and 9.6% on-year to \u20b974,700 crore, aided by an additional day in the quarter, JM Financial said in a note.<\/p>\n
“Further, it was supported by subscriber growth and telcos’ continued premiumisation efforts: a) MBB (mobile broadband) upgrades; b) prepaid-to-postpaid upgrades; c) data monetisation; and d) international roaming,” it said. <\/p>\n
In terms of revenue market share, Jio and Airtel widened their lead while Vodafone Idea (Vi) continued to slip. Jio’s adjusted gross revenue or AGR rose 1.5% QoQ (10.5% YoY) to \u20b931,300 crore, supported by strong subscriber additions, lifting its share by 4 basis points to 41.9%, with gains across most circles except metros.<\/p>\n
Airtel posted even stronger growth, with AGR up 2.6% QoQ (11.6% YoY) to \u20b930,300 crore, driven by ongoing premiumisation, raising its share by 49 basis points to 40.6%, with growth across all 22 circles and market share gains in 16 of them.<\/p>\n
In contrast, Vi’s revenue fell 0.8% QoQ to \u20b910,100 crore, hurt by a steep 14% decline in NLD\/ILD revenue, pulling its market share down 29 basis points to 13.6%, despite improvements in metros and category-A circles from its 4G expansion. <\/p>\n
Overall, analysts noted that Airtel’s higher revenue growth suggests comparatively better pricing absorption among its customers and stronger subscriber quality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Telecom sector revenues are expected to hit a new high of $35 billion (\u20b93.12 lakh crore) this fiscal year as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio consolidate their positions and the industry absorbs last year’s tariff hikes with minimal subscriber churn. This follows a decade-long contraction after Jio’s entry, when industry revenues plunged to just $15 billion in FY19 amid intense price wars and mass consolidation. With another round of tariff hikes expected, industry revenues are projected to climb further to $39 billion in FY27, Jefferies estimates, signalling the strongest growth cycle in over a decade. “We expect sector revenues to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-977320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=977320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=977320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=977320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=977320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}