An increasing number of Indian consumers are going in for more than one SIM card on their mobile devices to take advantage of the voice and data service plans offered by various operators. The incidence of multi-SIM has grown by 62 per cent over the last two years and is expected to continue rising as the market evolves, says a Nielsen study.

This phenomenon has resulted in growing competition amongst operators who try to keep up with consumers and prevent them from moving to other telecom service providers by offering attractive tariffs.

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the telecom subscriber base has grown by nearly 12 times in the last 10 years, but the ARPU (average revenue per user) that operators collect has reduced to one-third in this period due to lower calling rates and multiple competitive offers.

Nielsen says 15 per cent of mobile users in India are multi-SIM users. Users in lower SECs use multi-SIMs to keep costs at the bare minimum. The prevalence of multi-SIMs among smartphone users is at least 1.5 times more than among non-smartphone users and high ARPU customers.

While multi-SIM ownership is more common in higher SECs, it is important to note that the number of users is driven more by consumers from lower to medium SEC households.

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