RCOM remains unaffected by intense competition in telecom sector

Mumbai, June 13 (IANS) Reliance Communications (RCOM) on Wednesday said the company is now insulated from the hyper competition and tariff pressures in the telecom sector as it had exited the business-to-consumer (B2C) space in January 2018.

In a regulatory filing in the stock exchanges, RCOM said it is evident from the latest sector revenue report released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) that the wireless sector continues to be on a downward spiral, with over 21 per cent revenue decline on year-on-year basis. The overall revenue market size shrunk by over Rs 26,000 crore on an annualised basis.

"The tariff wars between the incumbents- Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and the new entrant Reliance JIO continue unabated, further dragging down all key financial metrics of the wireless sector. However, post its wireless B2C business exit in Jan-18, RCOM is no longer affected by the severe and prolonged wireless sector hyper competition," the company added.

Post exiting the telecom business the company has transformed itself into a pure business-to-business (B2B) player and is completely focused on the stable enterprise communications services and the rapidly growing data centre space in India with over 35,000 B2B customers in India.

"Its global submarine cable business in enterprise data across continents, with over 300 enterprise and carrier customers worldwide. RCOM now serves only 35,300 customers worldwide; earlier, the total number of customers served was over 120 million inclusive of B2C," the filing said.

It said: "RCOM operational business is fully insulated from the hyper competition, mega capex requirements, financial stress of the wireless sector."

The total number of people in the RCOM group is now 3,400 from the peak of 52,000, a reduction of 94 per cent.