Data services rule mobile revenues

 Cellphone owners are no longer using their phones just for talking. The share of short messaging service (SMS), ringtone downloads, multi media messaging service (MMS), gaming, and roaming in their monthly mobile spend is on the rise.

 According to a Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) study, revenue from value-added services such as roaming and SMS has doubled from just 20 per cent of the total revenues of cellular operators in March 2002 to nearly 40 per cent in June 2003.

 This comes even as revenue from voice traffic declined to 60 per cent at the end of June this year compared with the 80 per cent revenue in March 2002. The decrease is attributed to a 69 per cent drop in call charges.

 Pre-paid card users were more frequent users of SMS and other data services while the post-paid subscribers used roaming facility more, the study said.

 Explaining the surge in revenues from data services, sector observers pointed out that with competition resulting in a steep fall in call tariffs, cellular operators were pushing services such as MMS, mobile commerce, mobile gaming and applications based on text messaging to make up for the revenue loss from voice traffic.

 The other reason was that the tariffs for such services had been kept much higher as compared with a voice call, analysts said. For instance, international SMS charges had been more than doubled from Rs 2 last year to Rs 5 now.

 Similarly, roaming services cost Rs 6 a minute now, as compared with an average 50 paise a minute for local calls. Downloading ringtones also costs much higher now at Rs 7 per tune.

 Declining voice calls tariffs have pushed up average usage by over 25 per cent. Between March and June 2003, a 17 per cent increase in usage was recorded, with the four metros witnessing the highest rise of 37 per cent.

 With incoming calls becoming free, the number of calls received by a subscriber has increased to 74 per cent compared with 60 in the previous quarters.