OTT Platforms Affect Telecom Companies Voice Calls Revenue: Telecom services have completely changed with the increasing use of internet and social media and OTT apps. This can be gauged from the fact that the share of voice calls in the revenue of telecom companies has decreased by 80 percent in the last 10 years. At the same time, a decrease of 94 percent has been recorded in the revenue from SMS services. The share of voice calls in the revenue of telecom companies has decreased by 80 percent in the last 10 years. On the other hand, there has been a decrease of 94 percent in the revenue from SMS services. According to a circular issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), this decline is due to the increase in the use of Internet-based calling and messaging services in the last 10 years.
Increased use of OTT apps for voice calling
According to TRAI, the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) from internet usage has increased 10 times from the June, 2013 quarter to the December, 2022 quarter. TRAI in its recently released circular to regulate messaging and calling apps like WhatsApp, Google Meet, FaceTime etc. said that the growing use of ‘over the top’ (OTT) apps for messaging, voice calling is affecting telecom services worldwide. Internet has now become the main source of income for provider companies instead of messages and calls. All major components of ARPU have declined from June, 2013 to December, 2022 quarter. ARPU is the main way of measuring the growth of telecom companies.
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Call revenue share decreased
According to the TRAI document, the share of Internet earnings in the total revenue of telecom companies has increased almost 10 times from 8.1 in 2013 to 85.1 percent in December, 2022. However, during this period the ARPU of telecom companies has increased from Rs 123.77 to just Rs 146.96. As per the data, between the June 2013 quarter and the December 2022 quarter, the revenue share of calls declined to Rs 14.79, or 10.1 per cent of the total ARPU. In June 2013, it was Rs 72.53 or 58.6 per cent of the total revenue. Similarly, the revenue share of messaging service or SMS has come down from Rs 3.99 per ARPU to 23 paise.(with language input)
