Market Report, "India Telecommunications Report Q1 2013", Published

Recently published research from Business Monitor International, "India Telecommunications Report Q1 2013", is now available at Fast Market Research

by Bill Thompson

(WireNews+Co) - Boston, MA - 15 February 2013

BMI View: The Indian telecommunications market has experienced a considerable number of challenges in the last few years due to constant regulatory disputes and a hostile business environment, which includes an aggressive price war that has eroded operators' profitability. Despite the country's significant growth potential, the industry is struggling to capitalise on the opportunities, which will remain the central theme in the near future as we do not expect the market to reach a swift resolution of the complicated issues.

Key Data

- We have extended our forecast scenarios for mobile, ARPU, fixed-line, internet and broadband to 2017.
- The Indian mobile market experienced the first contraction after reporting a net subscriber loss of 27mn; consequently, we have adjusted our predictions.
- Operators' ARPU levels have seemingly turned the corner with improvements in CDMA ARPUs, although we believe that the long-term downtrend still holds.

View Full Report Details and Table of Contents (http://www.fastmr.com/prod/529374_india_telecommunications_report_q1_2013.aspx?afid=201) (http://www.fastmr.com/prod/529374_india_telecommunications_report_q1_2013.aspx?afid=201)

Key Trends & Developments

As expected, the 2G auction in India drew a muted response from the five bidders - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, IDEA Cellular, Videocon and Telewings. The government will receive INR94.076bn from the auction, which is well below the Department of Telecommunications's initial estimate of INR450bn. IDEA Cellular, Videocon and Telewings (previously Uninor) managed to secure licences in telecoms circles where they had had their licences cancelled. IDEA Cellular went one step further by winning an additional spectrum in Bihar. Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone India, which were not implicated in the 2G scandal, succeeded in winning extra spectrum in one and 14 circles respectively. Telenor and its Indian partner, Unitech, have reached an agreement regarding their joint venture Uninor. BMI believes resolving Uninor's ownership will be a key step for the operator to return its focus to subscriber services and expanding operations.

India was ranked 13th in BMI's latest Asia Pacific Telecoms Risk/Reward Ratings with a Telecoms Rating score of 49.9. Although this was a deterioration, both in ranking and score, from the previous quarter, we highlight that changes were made to our methodology. Despite the pervasive weakness of recent economic data, there is sufficient evidence across leading indicators to suggest that economic conditions will start to improve in the coming quarters. With this in mind, we are sticking to our above-consensus view on the economy, with our 5.7% and 6.8% real GDP growth projections for FY2012/13 and FY2013/14 coming in well above the Bloomberg median of 5.4% and 5.8%, respectively.

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