Recent Posts

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5G / Wi-Fi / Vodafone Idea Strategies to drive ARPU

« Last post by wiredlife on May 15, 2019, 06:48:04 PM »

For driving up ARPU, company has initiated several measures. (a) Minimum ARPU plans of Rs35 (despite leading to loss of customers having
ARPU of Rs0-10). (b) Introduced plans of Rs119 offering unlimited voice along with 1GB/month, enticing users to smartphone data consumption. (c) Continued content partnership to drive adoption of higher ARPU plans. (d) In line with Bharti Airtel’s decision to remove Rs299 postpaid plan, VIL has also indicated they may consider the same but may do it on staggered manner.

While the management clarified that it will be difficult to realize synergy benefits beyond the initial guidance of Rs84 bn, there are several additional cost control measures they can target. These would be looked at in due course. Focus at this point remains delivery of targeted merger cost synergies.

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3G / HSPA / EVDO / Vodafone Idea Network Integration + Infrastructure

« Last post by wiredlife on May 15, 2019, 06:46:44 PM »

Network integration continues at a swift pace and has been done in 10 circles – West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya
Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, North East, J&K, Bihar and Punjab along with part of the Delhi circle. Network capacity in these circles has increased 34% qoq post integration.

The company is seeing higher data traffic growth in these circles which is driving higher revenue growth. The company has already removed surplus equipment on 24,000 sites out of the total 67,000 co-located sites and has also exited 9,900 low utilization sites.
They expect capacity to increase further by 30% in the next quarter. To augment capacity, the company has added 8,915 4G TDD sites during the quarter and have also deployed massive MIMO on around 2,000 sites in select locations.

Company is executing its network investments by planning at a district level and prioritizing regions, which have higher revenue potential and superior current competition positioning of VIL. They have also deployed massive MIMO on around 2,000 sites in key locations. Their current 4G population coverage reaches 65% compared to less than 50% in August. The company seeks 4G coverage for 1 bn pop by end-FY2020.

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SmartPhones & Apps / How Jio Phones are Sold Using Reliance Retail ?

« Last post by wiredlife on April 02, 2019, 12:54:45 PM »

Reliance Retail purchases JioPhone, feature phone device, from OEMs and sells it to a third-party leasing entity at modest levels of EBITDA margins. JioPhone is then leased back by Reliance Retail from the third-party entity at a quarterly rental cost for a period of three years and provided to the customers subscribing for JioPhone services.

Reliance Retail had earlier indicated it plans to recover the rental cost over the life of a device through (1) margins (~2%) on related Jio recharges, (2) app-hosting charges on Kai-OS, which is the operating system used in JioPhone and owned by Reliance Retail, (3) revenues from advertisements on JioPhone and (4) other income on interest-free security deposit provided by the customer.

OPC Asset Solutions is the entity securitizing rent receivables from Reliance Retail for leasing of devices. It has raised Rs 120 bn in May-December 2018 from pass-through certificates (PTCs) under three trusts—(1) Rainbow Device Trust, Rs 15 bn @ 8.26% in May 2018, (2) Rent-A-Device Trust, Rs55 bn @ 9.25% in July 2018 and (3) Reliable Devices Trust, Rs50 bn @ 9.71% in December 2018. These PTCs are backed by over Rs130 bn of rent receivable against devices leased to Reliance Retail and the cumulative quarterly installment stands at Rs 11.5 bn now.

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4G / LTE / Vodafone Idea - Ramp Up 4G Network

« Last post by wiredlife on February 15, 2019, 04:40:42 PM »

Vodafone Idea is ramping up 4G network and subscribers. Vodafone Idea added 11,123 4G sites in 3QFY19, including 9,066 sites on TDD and 4G network’s population coverage has improved to ~60% (from 40-50%) and is targeting 95% by March-20. This helped it register 13% QoQ rise in 4G subscriber additions to 9.5m in 3QFY19, but 4G penetration is still low at 19% of 387m subscribers.

Management highlighted that Vodafone Idea extended the minimum Arpu plan (which makes recharge of Rs35/month necessary to keep numbers active) on a staggered basis to all circles. This resulted in 35m subscriber disconnections in 3QFY19 to total 387m and we factor another 22m decline in 4QFY19.

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4G / LTE / Jio Subscriber Base at 280 Million - No Price Cut

« Last post by wiredlife on January 22, 2019, 01:15:57 PM »

Jio has 280m subscribers, we estimate that c.65m are likely on JioPhones. Assuming an Arpu of Rs137 for smartphone users, the average Arpu of its JioPhone user could be Rs102, which is 11% higher than sector Arpus, implying that high-Arpu feature-phone subscribers are taking up JioPhones. This could be the reason for decline in Arpus that Bharti Airtel/Vodafone Idea have seen in B & C circles.

Jio management highlighted that it does not see any reason to cut tariffs given the strong ramp up in market share it has seen. We see this as a positive for the sector, as stability in tariffs over the past two quarters and adoption of bundled data plans have already resulted in stable sector revenues and in fact 3-16% growth in revenues of metro and A-circles (53% of sector revenues).

76

Cable / DSL Services / Jio's Hathway / Den Merger - FTTH Rollout

« Last post by wiredlife on January 22, 2019, 01:13:34 PM »

Jio is awaiting CCI approval for concluding deals with cable companies - Hathway and Den Networks which will be followed by a ramp up of fixed-line broadband services.

India has merely 18m households with fixed-line broadband implying 6% household penetration. With DSL and Ethernet forming 75% of current fixed-line broadband connections, a strong fibre offering by Jio could drive market-share gains. Jio has reiterated target of 50m home broadband subscribers.

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Cable / DSL Services / Jio to Monetize Massive Fiber / Smart Tower Network

« Last post by wiredlife on January 22, 2019, 01:06:02 PM »

Jio proposes to transfer fibre & tower assets to two separate undertakings is intended at monetising these assets and will likely follow an InvIT structure.

While too many details were not disclosed (likely to be completed in c3-6 mths), some key highlights: 1) It will lead to associated debt on Jio’s books being transferred to these entities, 2) It will help attract a new pool of capital into these passive infra assets (some investors have already evinced interest), 3) It will help Jio become a predominantly asset-light digital services company, 4) Jio will be the anchor customer for both tower & fibre assets (on a leasing model), with all future related capex to be borne by these entities, 5) The assets will be open to sharing with other telecom operators on mkt-based pricing, which could be a concern for BHIN (mgmt. clarified that sharing is possible on most of its towers, and does not view the sharing of its extensive fibre assets as a loss of competitive advantage).

78

5G / Wi-Fi / Airtel Digital Brain / Darts Platform

« Last post by wiredlife on January 22, 2019, 12:50:36 PM »

Airtel developed a Digital Brain (360 degree view of consumers), an intelligent and predictive platform helping Airtel understand each customer personally and contextually. This would help the company better engage with customers for selling its own services as well as partner services. Airtel mentions this as a ‘game changer’.

DARTS aggregates data from CRMs, billing systems, network, in-store visits, DTH, Telemedia, Wynk and My Airtel to prepare near real-time insights on consumers. It is a foundation for the revenue assurance function with several use cases like Airtel Secure, data rollover, proactive experience management, and credit line for customers.

79

FTTH Broadband / Jio Platform - Data Lake Play

« Last post by wiredlife on January 22, 2019, 12:49:32 PM »

Jio mentioned that other growth drivers are its JioPhone, upcoming FTTH and Enterprises services and digital tech platforms. It intends to enhance its digital tech. platform by entering into exclusive partnerships with content providers.

Robust user engagement will give Jio an opportunity to build the Jio Advertisement platform. In this light, we believe that Jio’s enterprise data lake – an integrated repository of massive data from internal and public sources (e.g. Social media), would be relevant, as it would give the company ability to target users with relevant advertisements.

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Technology / China Government Supports Autonomous Vehicles / Self Driving Cars

« Last post by wiredlife on January 20, 2019, 04:37:51 PM »

Baidu has sold 100 self-driving minibuses this July which now operates in 10 locations and has carried 10,000 passengers. Chinese state-owned autos manufacturer, FAW, expects to launch the first Apollo L4 self-driving passenger car in 2019 and mass production in 2020. Baidu is also helping Changsha’s government to develop robotic taxis with expected launch in end-2019. Additionally, the company has signed a strategic contract to help Beijing and Shanghai government build smart cities.

With the government’s blessing, China could become world’s largest self-driving car market given its serious traffic problem. China Mobile is prepared to launch a nationwide 5G network in China when autonomous driving is ready.