Revenue declines by 23% in fixed line phone business: Survey

The fixed line telephone business in India in 2009-10 saw a decline in growth with revenues dropping by 23.3 per cent to Rs 18,900 crore from 24,649 crore in the corresponding previous fiscal.

The top three fixed line players — BSNL, MTNL and Bharti Airtel — reported a revenue decline.

However, some companies like Reliance Communications, TTSL and TTML posted growth in revenues, a recent survey by telecom industry journal 'Voice and Data' revealed.

The International Long Distance (ILD) segment posted a 17.3 per cent growth to earn a revenue of Rs 17,600 crore, thanks to a booming subscriber base of almost 600 million.

While Tata Communications (erstwhile VSNL) grew by 12.7 per cent, the growth of Reliance Communications and BSNL was by 4.1 per cent and 4.6 per cent respectively, the survey revealed.

The ILD growth was a result of the Indian telecom operators increasing their presence in foreign markets. This brought in additional ILD revenue for domestic operators. With falling rates there has been a substantial growth in terms of inbound voice traffic into India.

Adding to their challenges is VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) based calling. The big challenge for ILD operators is the growing popularity of formal as well as informal (and illegal) internet telephony operators (for both inbound and outbound internal calls), who bypass the licenced operators.