World's Largest Mobile Networks by Data Traffic - March 2021

The analysis firm Tefficient, posted this chart in one of their Tweets. As you can see that China Mobile is the leader, followed by Reliance Jio and then China Unicom, China Telecom, Airtel and Vi (Vodafone Idea). 

The largest operators in the world when it comes to data traffic: China Mobile in solid lead, Airtel India with fastest y-o-y growth (52%), China Unicom with the slowest (9%) - overtaken by China Telecom (47%). pic.twitter.com/aVDN4FLN6Y

— tefficient 🚥 (@tefficient) March 25, 2021

As you can see, Bharti Airtel, India and China Telecom are also enjoying huge traffic growth.

Last year, Tefficient had also reported the absolute number up to 1H 2020. Vodafone Group (excluding vi) is the next highest carrier of the data traffic followed by Telkomsel Indonesia, Telenor group, MTS Russia, AIS Thailand, 3 Group Europe, Zain Group, XL Indonesia, Indosat and 3 Indonesia.

Of course not everyone agrees with all the numbers

If I read the TRAI report correctly Indian operators carried 76,319 PB in 2019. See chart below. If I add the Jio, Airtel & Vodafone Idea volumes shown in your chart I get 76,285 PB. Do the 120 million BSNL subs have zero data usage? Jio's 44,560 PB number is probably wrong. pic.twitter.com/SZmefBxLi9

— Antonios Drossos (@AntoniosDrossos) September 8, 2020

We will provide updated ranking when it is available. 

India Auctions 4G (and 5G) Spectrum

The Indian Department of Telecommunications (DoT), part of Ministry of Communication just concluded a spectrum auction. The detailed results for anyone interested is available here. As the spectrum allocation happens on a regional level rather than national level, it may be a bit confusing to understand for the outsiders.

'India sells spectrum worth $10.6B in two-day auction', nicely put by Light Reading. 

While the telcos acquired spectrum in several bands, the 700MHz spectrum remained unsold because of the high reserve price. An Airtel statement mentioned that the "the reserve pricing of these bands [700MHz and 3.5GHz] must be addressed on priority in future. This will help the nation to benefit from the digital dividend that will inevitably arise out of this."

CommsUpdate reported: 

India’s mass spectrum auction, which saw the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) put up for sale a total of 2,308MHz of airwaves across seven bands, has ended after just two days, with the government netting INR778.15 billion (USD10.6 billion) – well below the reserve price of INR3.92 trillion for the total available spectrum – with around two-thirds of the available spectrum left unsold.

As anticipated, the trio of bidders – Reliance Jio Infocomm (Jio), Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea (Vi) – steered clear of the 700MHz band, marking the second time that the government has failed to sell the sought-after airwaves by overpricing the spectrum. The operators also avoided the 2500MHz band, whilst just 15MHz of the 175MHz available in the 2100MHz band was sold.

The Economic Times writes that Jio purchased the most spectrum, paying INR571.23 billion for 488.35MHz, focusing primarily on renewing its 800MHz licences alongside frequencies in the 1800MHz and 2300MHz bands. Airtel paid the next largest amount, with INR186.99 billion for a total of 355.45MHz across the 800MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz, 2100MHz and 2300MHz bands. Vi, meanwhile, purchased just 11.8MHz of spectrum in the 900MHz and 1800MHz bands for a total of INR19.93 billion.

In their press release, Jio said, "The acquired spectrum can be utilised for transition to 5G services at the appropriate time, where Jio has developed its own 5G stack."

Last year, The Economic Times of India had reported that Jio wants to do 5G Standalone (SA) while Airtel and Vi will do 5G Non-Standalone (NSA). The different 5G options are shown above and if you are not familiar, check out the tutorial here.

Matt Walker from MTN Consulting pointed out in the LinkedIn post that:

The $11B raised in this week's auctions is just a bit over the 2019 capex result for the whole industry (excluding spectrum).

Since the end of 2019, India's telco capex - again, excluding spectrum - has been trending downwards, with annualized capex through 3Q20 amounting to $7.7B.

It would be interesting to see how and how quickly do all the operators put their newly acquired spectrum to use. 

Related Posts: 

• Operator Watch Blog: Jio is the Largest Mobile Network in India by Subscriber Numbers
• Operator Watch Blog: Jio going it alone for 5G Development
• The 3G4G Blog: Reliance Jio and 5G Network Architecture Option 6
• The 3G4G Blog: 5G Network Architecture Options (Updated)
• The 3G4G Blog: The Politics of Standalone vs Non-Standalone 5G & 4G Speeds
• The 3G4G Blog: What about 5G Network Architecture Option 4 (a.k.a. NE-DC) ?
• The 3G4G Blog: Would 5G NSA undergo Sunset? When?
• The 3G4G Blog: Radio Design Webinar: Optimising Your 700 MHz Deployments 

Vi Sakhi: Helping Women Keep Safe in India

In October 2018, Vodafone Idea Ltd (now called Vi) launched Sakhi, a service to address key barriers women face to accessing and using mobile in India, as well as women’s concerns about personal safety – both the safety issues and threats that may arise from owning a mobile and general safety concerns that women experience that mobile could help address.

GSMA documents a detailed case study on early evidence of Sakhi’s social impact and Vodafone’s key success factors in meeting the needs of female customers. It also provides practical recommendations for mobile operators and other stakeholders interested in reaching female customers with a similar service.

The PDF of the case study is available here.

The video above provides story from Sakhi's customers on how the service has dramatically improved their lives.

Jio is the Largest Mobile Network in India by Subscriber Numbers

Last year, nearly the same time we wrote about Jio just crossing the 300 million mark. In the latest set of announcements, Jio has announced that they now have 388 million subscribers. I do not see an M2M breakout for Jio anywhere, so I am assuming these are all non-M2M connections.

According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) annual report, the wireless subscribers at the end of 2019 stood as follows:

• Bharti Airtel (including Tata Tele.) 327.3 million
• Reliance Com 17.7 thousand
• Vodafone Idea - 332.6 million
• BSNL - 118 million
• BSNL (VNO's) - 91 thousand
• MTNL - 3.37 million
• Reliance Jio - 370 million
• Total - 1.151 billion

According to Bharti Airtel press release from Feb 2020, overall customer base stands at 419 million across 16 countries. In which:

• India 308.738 million
• South Asia 2.933 million
• Africa 107.140 million

According to the website, there are "India: 279,430,000 GSM mobile (Excluding M2M)". So the subscriber base is much smaller if M2M is removed.

Vodafone Idea's website says, "Welcome to the world of Vodafone Idea Limited, where our 304 million (Q3FY20) customers are at the heart of everything that we do." Combining this with the TRAI data, we can infer they have roughly 28 million M2M connections.

One argument is also about the number of active connections rather than just subscribers. TRAI report says that while Airtel have 96.14% active subscriber base, Jio is just 89.47%. The number is for Dec 2019. Taking this data into account along with the latest numbers, we can still confidently say that Reliance Jio has more active subscribers (approx. 319.63 million) in March 2020 than any other mobile operator.

Jio is on it's way to be the second largest operator (including groups) in the world.


Related Posts:

• Operator Watch Blog: Jio going it alone for 5G Development
• Operator Watch Blog: Jio Makes Another Set of Extremely Bold Announcements
• Operator Watch Blog: Reliance Jio Announces Progress, Amid Decreasing ARPU
• Operator Watch Blog: World's largest mobile networks by subscriber numbers - Jan 2019

India: Disruption and Competition

I have previously written about the disruptioncaused by Reliance Jio since its explosive entry into the Indian mobile market. This operator launched their 4G service in September 2016 and continues to go from strength to strength as it adds subscribers and reported a second consecutive quarterly profit and earnings of INR7.23 billion ($108 million) for its full financial year 2017-2018.

Its mobile subscriber base rose by 83 million year-on-year to take its total to 187 million at end-March 2018. ARPU dropped 11 per cent sequentially to INR137 in the January-March period. Average data consumption per user per month hit 9.7GB, which the company said was the highest in India and one of the highest in the world. Average video consumption per user per month was 13.8 hours.

Data from GSMA Intelligence show Jio’s market share rose to 14 per cent at end-March 2018, from 9 per cent a year earlier. Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Jio’s parent Reliance Industries, said:

 “A full-blown social, mobile and digital revolution is underway across the world, and I am glad that India is not being left behind in any way. Everyone at Jio is today proud to have played a pivotal role in transforming the digital landscape of this country and empowering millions of Indians with all the leading digital tools and skills.”

He emphasized the strong financial results in a competitive market environment demonstrates the robustness of their business model.

According to Open Signal Jio continued to dominate the 4G availability metric as testers were able to access an LTE signal 96.4% of the time. Such a score is exceptional, reflecting Jio's commitment to build out a 4G-only network without 3G mobile data services to fall back on. What's more, Jio's impressive LTE reach is only improving, though incrementally. The last India report in October, measured Jio's 4G availability at 95.6%.

However the success of Jio has come at the expense of others especially the ill-fated Reliance Communications (RCom) owned by the junior Ambani brother Anil,  which is heading towards a complete exit from India’s mobile sector, ending its 16-year stay in the market. The operator is folding, with a debt load standing at roughly $7 billion.

After striking a deal to sell wireless assets to Reliance Jio in 2017, which was given the go-ahead by Indian courts within the past fortnight, the debt-ridden operator was expected to remain in the market with the creation of a “new Reliance Communications”, using its remaining fixed-line and wholesale assets to serve enterprise clients.

But, just as the company looks set to complete its sale to Jio and put its B2B plans in motion, reports suggest Ambani junior is now looking to sell RCom’s remaining enterprise and wholesale assets.

Ironically by acquiring RCom’s infrastructure and assets, which in effect saved RCom from insolvency, Jio is expected to step up the competition even further with market leader Bharti Airtel and the proposed Vodafone India, Idea Cellular joint entity.

Speaking to Mobile World Live, Satyajit Sinha, research analyst IoT and mobility at Counterpoint Research, described Jio’s entry into the Indian market as a “death knell for RCom”, but noted problems started long before Anil’s older brother Mukesh stormed the Indian market with reduced data and voice offers through Jio. According to Sinha:

“RCom’s main business model was dependent upon the CDMA technology well suited for voice services, but not so for advanced data services compared to the competition which were on the path to 4G. A lack of flexibility meant the transition from CDMA to GSM was not as smooth and was a setback as Reliance continued to lose subscribers to the likes of Vodafone, Idea and Airtel.”

Finally, Sinha noted a “lack of strategic network evolution vision in addition to a lack of scale has driven RCom to this stage”.

RCom’s situation could have been very different, had Anil been allowed to proceed with a merger with South Africa’s MTN almost nine years ago. However, Senior Ambani had blocked the deal. And nine years later, he has been on hand to put the final nail in the coffin of his brother’s mobile business, as part of a wider quest to seize market domination. Family rivalry in action. 

Meanwhile, market leader Bharti Airtel reported a profit drop of 77.8 per cent in its fiscal Q4 2017, as the company continued to feel the effects of the Jio disruption/ increased competition in India which has led to an intense price war.

In an earnings statement for the quarter ending 31 March 2018, Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO of India and South Asia suggested poor performance was due to: 

 “below cost, artificially suppressed pricing. Industry revenues were further adversely impacted this quarter due to the reduction in international termination rates.” 

The operator reported net income of INR830 million ($12.5 million), a sharp fall from INR3.73 billion in the same quarter year prior. Revenue dropped 10.5 per cent to INR196.34 billion from INR219.35 billion, which was attributed to the termination rate cuts.

Airtel’s profit drop is its largest in 15 years, Despite the decline, the operator’s mobile subscriber base grew 4.9 per cent to more than 304 million, contributing to an overall customer base of more than 413 million.

According to Open Signal Airtel demonstrated by far the biggest improvement in 4G reach, boosting its 4G availability by more than 9 percentage points to 66.8% in their measurements. But Airtel was also the furthest behind in this metric six months ago, so its recent surge in availability didn't propel it ahead of any of its competitors in the rankings. 

Meanwhile Idea, an operator with a 17 per cent market shareby subscribers, suffered a net loss of INR41.4 billion ($620 million) in the year to end-March, compared with an INR4.04 billion loss in fiscal 2017. Total revenue dropped 20.5 per cent year-on-year to INR283 billion.

Total mobile subscribers increased by 5 million year-on-year to 194.5 million at end-March.

Capex for the fiscal year hit INR70 billion, in line with its guidance. The operator added 45,000 3G and 4G sites to take the total to 155,000 at end-March.

The company is to due merge with Vodafone India and is in the final leg of regulatory approvals, expected to be completed in the first half of this year. The operators are already sharing about 49,000 mobile sites and plan to share fibre and points-of-presence in 220 cities.The merger, may well create a new market leader in India, however it is being speculated around 5,000 staff could be made redundant over the coming months as the companies prepare to reduce costs and streamline operations. Idea has about 11,000 employees: Vodafone India around 10,000. 

Finally State-run telco Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is expected to soon get 5 Mhz slot in the 2100 Mhz band for rolling out fourth-generation or 4G services that may make India’s telecom landscape more competitive with rivals such as Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular already pitting against each other.BSNL chairman Anupam Shrivastava told ETTelecom.

“By next month, 5 Mhz in the 2100 Mhz band will come across 21 licensed service areas except for Rajasthan where we aim to launch 4G services on the 800 Mhz band radio waves,” 

The state-driven telco is currently offering third-generation (3G) technology-based services on the 2100 Mhz band spectrum which it wants to further use optimally for 4G-based voice and data services. According to Shrivastava: 

“By rolling out 4G with an additional five units in the 2100 Mhz band can also help in utilization of unused spectrum offering contiguity,” 

Therefore they can offer 2G, 3G and 4G services concurrently.

Once more the disruptive foray of Reliance Jio in September 2016, on the back of freebies has led incumbents such as market-leader Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular to drastically cut per Gigabyte (GB) data cost or as low as Rs 5 per GB with virtually free voice calls across prepaid and postpaid platforms today.

So its seems market competition will get even fiercer. 

The changing and challenging telecom landscape of India

The telecom landscape of India is changing exponentially. Approximately 215 million subscribers may have to change their allegiances due to the lack of financial stability at Reliance Communications, Aircell and Tata Teleservices (which is on the verge of closing down its operations across India).

The beneficiary is Mukesh Ambani. The oil tycoon who ties with Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s Pony Ma as the third-richest person in Asia is winning subscribers at a rate of 5 million a month by offering free voice calls and cheap data through his operator Reliance Jio. 

“…there are more than 50 crore (500 million) feature phone users who have been left out of the digital revolution,” Ambani said at Reliance Industries’ annual general meeting in Mumbai, where he launched the JioPhone. “This digital disempowerment and unfairness must end. Jio is committing to end it today.”

 In effect, apart from giving telecom companies a run for their money, Reliance Jio is also set to disrupt India’s smartphone market. Launched last September, Reliance Jio already offers free voice calling, as well as the world’s cheapest internet data plan, starting at Rs49 ($0.76) per gigabyte (GB). On the JioPhone, voice calling will “always” be free and unlimited data will cost only Rs153 ($2.38) per month.

Its free schemes and recharge options have expanded Jio’s user base rapidly. Some 66% of Reliance Jio customers were using the service as their primary connection by March, up from 50% in December. The company claims that mobile data usage in India fared around 0.2 billion GB per month in the pre-Jio era. After Reliance Jio’s entry, overall data consumption supposedly skyrocketed to 1.2 billion GB per month, of which 1 billion is consumed by Jio subscribers. According to Ambani the service provider now has over 125 million customers. 

However such radical changes are accompanied by various issues for example with only 300 million smartphone users in the country, the growth could soon hit a wall—hence, the development of the JioPhone, a 4G-enabled feature phone with a large screen and access to apps. More on the JioPhone here. Not to be left behind Airtel and Vodafone India are also launching smartphones. 

So Jio are dynamic enough to offer competitive data rates and a 4G phone but  as a result the prices of wireless data have fallen by about 97% in one year after the entry of Reliance Jio, from about Rs 200 per GB a year ago to about Rs 6 per GB in the June quarter.

While operators like Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular used to offer 1 GB of data for Rs 250, they now offer about 50 GB for the same price. 

Such massive growth creates its own problems for example: Reliance Jio’s network is “overloaded”, with congestion creating a bottleneck that is slowing down connections for its customers, according to new analysis by OpenSignal. According to this report, Reliance Jio lags behind Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea in terms of 4G speeds, but is market leading in terms of 4G coverage. 

Moreoever what about the ARPU downshift? According to analysts due this reorganisation of subscribers and the very reasonable prices they are paying this is will continue. Reliance Jio has irreversibly changed the market from a pricing-focused one to an ARPU-focused one. In the price-focused market, companies like Vodafone and Airtel tried to keep prices high, volumes low and margins fat. In the volume-based game, pricing is dictated by two factors — the ability of the network to support demand, and the need to increase consumption by users. While the second factor — the need to increase data use — puts a downward pressure on prices, the first factor — network stability and quality concerns — puts a bottom on how low they can be kept.

 Another major issue is spectrum India allows relatively little spectrum for mobile communications, and splits that up among a dozen operators. A lot of radio spectrum is blocked for defence use. The 'Spectrum Crunch' is pretty bad, for example Delhi's top operator has roughly the same number of 3G users as its counterparts in Singapore and Shanghai (about 3 million), but it has about a tenth of their spectrum. As user numbers grow - faster than spectrum availability. And more people will use data, especially video, stressing the network further. This is yet another challenge for the operators. Success in this new telecom landscape depends almost entirely on network capacity. The more capacity the network has, the lower your offering can be priced and the higher consumption can be driven.

Vodafone and Connected Farming in India

After reading several very tragic reports about large numbers of Indian farmers committing suicide. I was intrigued to come across Vodafone's 'Connected Farming in India' report. This report alleges that the mobile services summarised below could enhance 
earnings by an average of US$128 a year for almost two-thirds of Indian farmers, achieving
a material positive impact in communities where the average farming household lives on 
less than $4 a day and many farmers struggle to feed and educate their families.

India is one of the world’s largest food producers with more than 200 million people currently estimated to work in agriculture, around 100 million of them farmers and the remainder working as agricultural labourers. In India, around 62% of farmers own less than one hectare of land, significantly increasing their exposure to the effects of crop failure, pests, disease and volatile market pricing.

Vodafone and Accenture Strategy have identified six mobile services with the potential to transform Indian farmers’ lives and livelihoods.

Agricultural information services providing early warning of weather events, information on the best times to harvest and advice on crop techniques to enhance yields. These services could increase an estimated 60 million Indian farmers’ annual incomes by an average of US$89 a year in 2020.

Receipt services to provide greater transparency in daily commodity supply chains, allowing farmers to raise their incomes by improving efficiency and eliminating fraud.

Payments and loans enabling farmers to access simple and secure financial products and services using mobile money payment systems such as Vodafone’s M-Pesa, launched in India in April 2013. Access to highly cost-effective micro-finance and quick and transparent electronic payment systems could provide an annual benefit of US$690 for some farmers in 2020, representing a 39% increase in their average farming income.

Field audit enabling auditors monitoring quality, sustainability and certification requirements to move away from paper records and adopt instead electronic reporting via tablets and mobile data, greatly enhancing efficiency and potentially increasing annual average income by US$612 for some farmers.

Local supply chain enabling small-scale producers to transact with local co-operatives through simple but robust information services and mobile money systems. These could boost some farmers’ annual incomes by US$271 in 2020; a 50% increase on current farming incomes.

Smartphone-enabled services to provide deeper functionality and richer sources of information than is possible using basic SMS and voicemail services. While smartphone penetration is currently low in rural areas in emerging market economies, average device prices continue to fall year-on-year. Advanced and affordable mobile services could lead to an increase in average annual farming incomes of US$675 for more than four million farmers in 2020.

For more information: link to the report.