Telecom on the brink of recovery

An inevitable price recovery expected from the second-half of financial year 2020 would change the fortunes of telecom companies as their Average Revenue Per User (ARPUs) would rebound. ARPU, a metric used to gauge the financial strength of an operator, was pushed to a decadal low after Reliance Jio Infocomm launched its services.

RJio’s entry in FY17 had unleashed one of the most “brutal price” wars in India’s telecom market. Consequently, industry ARPU plunged about 38 per cent, leading to the total industry size shrinking to ₹1.4 trillion from ₹1.8 trillion, said a report by Edelweiss.