Indian mobile operators' Q1 sales up 8.4%

NEW DELHI: India's private mobile operators, representing some 60 percent of the booming wireless market, said revenues in April-June rose 8.4 percent from the previous quarter, offsetting the 6.7 percent decline in average revenue per user (ARPU).

India's flourishing mobile sector, the world's fastest growing major wireless market, offers cut-rate tariffs of less than one U.S. cent a minute on an average to more than 40 million users that are growing by between 1.3 and 1.6 million each month.

The Cellular Operators' Association, which reported the performance of seven private carriers using the GSM communications platform, said revenue touched 26.26 billion rupees in the first quarter and monthly average revenue per user, a key measure, was 402.12 rupees.

That compared with a revenue of 24.23 billion and an average monthly ARPU of 431.34 rupees in the January-March quarter.

The numbers represent the wireless operations of carriers such as Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd. and Hutchison Essar Telecom Ltd., but do not include the performance of state-run firms Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd.

Private GSM operators also compete with powerful business groups Reliance and Tatas who offer similar services based on the rival CDMA technology.

Hutchison Essar Telecom Ltd., a unit of Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa group, showed the maximum growth -- 16.2 percent -- in quarterly revenue to 8.04 billion rupees and suffered the minimum erosion in monthly ARPU at 1.4 percent.

Hutchison Essar, which is planning to list on the Indian stock markets in late 2004 or early 2005, offers mobile services in 11 of the 23 zones across the country which have been drawn up by India's department of telecoms. Each zone is roughly equal to a large city or a state.

It plans to roll out services in two more zones later this year to take on larger rivals like Bharti, Reliance and BSNL.

Bharti, India's largest GSM-player and 28 percent owned by Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., reported a 9.5 percent rise in wireless revenue to 9.09 billion rupees, while its average monthly ARPU fell 5.4 percent to 419.81 rupees.

New Delhi-based Bharti has a network in 16 zones and plans to have a national footprint by the end of 2004.

Only the BPL group, which operates in four zones, reported a fall in revenue which declined 4.9 percent to 1.83 billion rupees. The drop in average monthly ARPU was even sharper -- 19.2 percent at 303.14 rupees.

India's mobile industry is growing by between three and four percent each month in terms of number of users, but revenue has not kept pace because carriers regularly resort to cutting tariffs to lure new users or attract them away from rivals.