BSNL losing ground in landline arena Revenue dips; 6 lakh connections surrendered

[Sir john]

Faced with stiff competition from private players and the ever growing popularity of mobile phones, telecom behemoth BSNL is feeling the pinch in its landline phones business with a steady decline in revenues, owing to the steep fall in its customer base. In Punjab circle alone, revenues from landline users have fallen by Rs 67 crore in the last two fiscals (2008-10) and the number of landline connections continue to decline at a steady pace of almost two lakh a year. In the past three years, BSNL has lost six lakh landline customers and this reverse trend is not only restricted to home and office users only but the PCOs too. According to statistics, revenue collection from landline connections in the year 2008-09 was Rs 433.14 crore and it came down by 16 % in year 2009-10 to Rs 365.58 in the last fiscal. The total revenue collected by BSNL under various heads, i.e landline, broadband, GSM, CDMA in 2008-09 was Rs 1,075.11 crore and it fell to Rs 1,055.30 crore in the last fiscal. Insiders admit that BSNL broadband services have proved to be a "life saver" for the organisation as losses in revenue would have been much greater without it. Broadband services have picked up in Punjab circle considerably in the last three years as against 49,000 connections in 2008-09 and 59,000 connections in the last fiscal, 41,000 new connections have been added in the current fiscal till July.“If volume decrease, revenue would automatically go downâ€, says a senior official of BSNL. He informed that on an average every year 2 lakh subscribers are surrendering their landline phones. The situation is no better this year. Between April and July 53,847 persons got rid of their landline phones. The officials, however, claim that subscription rate improved this year where around 26,292 new connections were given. At the same time, the number of PCO connections has also been declined. Almost 21,000 connections have been closed in past three fiscals (2007-08 to 2009-10) against 7,426 new connections added during the same period. Talking to The Tribune, SS Sirohi, Chief General Manager, BSNL, Punjab Circle, said, “The dent in the wireline service is with the start of the mobile services as they are more personalised, handy and available at low cost.â€:cantstop::cantstop::cantstop::cantstop::cantstop::cantstop:

[ViruRulez]

Not quite surprising to be frank.. people are using landline phones a lot lesser now especially of BSNL and hence there is so many surrenders .. they should concentrate on broadband and 3G market instead and also rectify their cell phone service .. BSNL has been quite profitable all these years and they are not keeping up pace with technology compared to private players .. once they do so they will be very profitable once again