Telecom Lead India: BSNL is likely to report 9 percent decrease in its revenues for the fiscal 2012-13 at Rs 25,384 crore against Rs 27,944 crore during 2011-12.

For the year-ended March 2012, the state-run BSNL had recorded losses of Rs 8,851 crore.

The poor performance is despite a series of steps that the company has put in place recently, including monetizing real estate assets, to arrest the downward spiral in revenues and profits, Economic Times reported.

BSNL chairman and MD RK Upadhyay, in his performance reviews with telecom minister Kapil Sibal on November 16, said: “The company had placed its first orders for mobile equipment since 2007 only recently, and added that more tenders for expanding its cellular networks would be issued soon, the results of which would reflect in the next financial year.”

According to Upadhyay, BSNL had taken steps to increase revenues including hiving off its towers into a separate company. BSNL estimates that this move will bring in Rs 1600 crore over the next five years. The other plan is to lease its CDMA network, and roll out Wi-Fi networks or hotspots across the country. Wi-Fi is estimated to bring in about Rs 500 crore in the first year and double this from the second year onwards.

BSNL’s wireless revenue, enterprise sales, broadband sales and outgoing minutes of usage (OGMOU) in the first six months have increased 6.65 percent, 26.8 percent, 8.3 percent and 4.14 percent respectively compared to the earlier year.

Mobile revenue for the year-ended March 2013, is projected at Rs 5931.7 crore, up 5.32 percent against Rs 5632.3 crore during 2011-12. Revenue from new businesses is projected to increase to Rs 110.4 crore from Rs 103.6 crore in 2011-12.

BSNL has urged the Government to endorse TRAI’s proposal to provide it with Rs 2,750-crore subsidy for sustaining its loss-making rural landline operations. This is since money from the USO Fund stopped coming to BSNL, post-July 2011, as DoT had provisioned to release the Rs 2000 crore annual subsidy only for three years, starting 2008.

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