provider BSNL has posted 8 percent decrease in revenue to Rs 29,688 crore in
2010-11 against Rs 32,045 crore in the previous fiscal, according to results posted on BSNL’s website.
The company’s net loss has gone up to Rs 6,384 crore in
2010-11 from Rs 1,822 crore in 2009-10. Loss before tax was Rs 6,578 crore in
2010-11 as compared with Rs 2,197 crore. Decline in revenue and increasing
expenditure resulted in losses for BSNL.
Income from services was Rs 27,044 crore in 2010-11 against
Rs 27,913 crore.
BSNL strategies to revive business
BSNL is taking several steps to reduce its losses and to
improve its financial performance. The new steps include: optimizing CAPEX and
OPEX through convergence and consolidation of infrastructure; strengthening of
stable revenue streams through concerted focus on broadband and enterprise
business with major focus on government projects; focusing on the revenue from
top 100 cities for monitoring purpose; sustained operational focus on customer
care, service delivery, service assurance, revenue management and asset
management; aggressive push on data usage and value added services; clear cut
segregation of commercial activities from social obligation to ensure
sustainable growth and progressive migration of current network to next
generation network thereby ensuring convergence, consolidation and seamless
delivery of various services to end customers across different technologies.
TRAI recommends Rs 600 crore subsidy to BSNL
To revive the business of loss-making state owned telco,
TRAI has recently recommended a subsidy of Rs 600 crore to BSNL, which would
help the teleco in maintaining rural wireline connections installed before
April 1, 2002.
In India, rural wireline subscription is constantly
plunging. It dipped by 1 percent in January taking the total rural wireline
base to 7.67 million, whereas rural wireless subscription is increasing at a
healthy rate. In January, rural wireless subscriber base stood at 312.62
million at 1.64 percent monthly growth.
BSNL seeks TRAI support on 3G spectrum
BSNL has urged the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India
(TRAI) to waive 3G spectrum usage charge for a few years in order to become
more competitive in the market place.
BSNL suggested that the focus of TRAI should be to protect
the interest of operators in addition to protecting the interest of consumers. Almost
all operators are on the negative growth of profitability. The revenue accrued
from 3G services is yet to match the cost of capital of the 3G spectrum fees.
