My apologies that I couldn’t write about the Airtel Conference Call Post Q2 results. However, here is an interesting piece of data which has caught everybody by surprise. Airtel gets 14.5% revenues from VAS of which 9.5% is from SMS. This means the remaining 5% includes VAS like CRBT, IVR, etc along with 3G Data Services.
Airtel also derives revenues from some of its services like ‘facebook on SMS’ and ‘twitter on SMS’ as SMS revenues. These can technically be seen as data revenues and should not be significant in the overall comparison.
At the end of Sept-2011, Airtel India has 31 mn Mobile Internet Subscribers (24 mn 2G + 7 mn 3G). This is Active Internet Subscribers Data as released by the company which contradicts 130+ Mn report released by TRAI [TRAI is Govt, uff!!] Now the point of interest is what is the approximate ARPU of Data ? Airtel reported Rs4.7 bn non-SMS VAS revenues, less Rs2.3 bn from 2G VAS in the Sep 2011 quarter implies Rs 2.4 Bn Pure data revenues on a customer base of 31 Mn. This approximately gives Airtel Rs 26 / Month / User from Mobile Internet / Data Services. This is a pathetic number. This must be the same for Vodafone and Idea Cellular as well and thus explains the onslaught on CDMA EVDO Broadband Data Services by COAI in a written complaint to DoT.
Also, we are running a 3G usage survey [See to the extreme Right Hand side of Screen] for the past 2 weeks and out of the 360 Votes polled, a whopping 65% have said that they are not opting for 3G due to High Prices while another 20% complain about coverage issues. So the operators need to do their homework before launching new products 🙂
3G plans is quite acceptable but no coverage in my area and 3G data roaming charges is unacceptable.