What is hurting the telecom sector is intense competition over the past 18 months.
The entry of Reliance Jio (RJio) has aggravated this, offering free voice and data services, from September.
The RJio launch has had a twin impact. It has forced incumbent operators to price their products aggressively to retain subscribers. Bharti, Vodafone, and Idea recently launched unlimited voice plans, bundled with data. However, the aggressive pricing has not led to a significant uptick in volumes.
The free voice offer from RJio would also mean that growth voice revenues, bread and butter for the major players, would remain flat due to the slowing volumes.
