Monday, September 3, 2007

India Wireless Growth Evaluation




Indian Telecom sector has been experiencing pervasive growth since last few years. Every passing month we hear subscribers addition crossing previous month records.

The total number of telephone subscribers reached 232.87 million at the end of July 2007 as compared to 225.01 million in June 2007. The overall tele-density increased to 20.52 in July 2007.

In the wireless segment, 8.06 million subscribers have been added in July 2007 while 7.34 million subscribers were added in June 2007. The total wireless subscribers (GSM, CDMA & WLL (F)) base is 192.98 million now.

This exhibits tremendous market potential for all the telecom companies especially service providers.

In my coming posts, I will try to look for the market potential for the service providers in terms of addressable market.

According to data compiled by industry bodies and the Department of Telecommunications, in 2005, wireless penetration was 25 times lower in rural compared to urban areas. Growth in rural areas will be determined by scores of factors, which we will try to analyze in subsequent posts.

Therefore our initial focus would be on urban areas because rural area has to be still penetrated as rural contributes in meager numbers.

We will try to analyze market potential in urban areas.

Lets€™ start exploring this with the numbers.

1. According to Census of India, 2001; population of India was 1,027,015,247 with 27.78% (285,304,837) of total population lived in urban areas.

2. The country€™s total urban population on 1st March 2007 was 285 million. (Source: IBEF)

3. As per the TRAI Monthly report of July, wireless subscribers number stands at 192,976,538.

4. Assuming wireless penetration is limited to urban areas only and every person in a family have wireless connection or tend to go wireless, difference between wireless subscribers and total population living in urban areas; market potential for service provider comes out to be roughly 92,328,298.

5. This implies with the monthly new subscriber addition of 7 Million subscribers, this difference can be reached in the next 14 months.

WHAT NEXT??????

I will try to explore further in my next posts. I will try to do more number crunching regarding states urban/rural population and then correlating with the respective wireless penetration.

Assumptions:

  1. Population statistics taken from per India Census 2001, assuming no annual growth coupled with rural to urban areas non migration.
  2. Wireless penetration is limited to urban areas only and every person in a family either have wireless connection or tend to go wireless.
  3. This also discounts the wireless connection buying capacity of every individual living in urban area.

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