Airtel breaks BSNL dominance in India

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Indian telecom services industry registered a 20.7 per cent growth, clocking revenues of Rs. 1,57,542 crore in FY ‘09, compared to Rs. 1,30,561 crore in FY ‘08, according to Voice&Data, the telecom magazine from the CyberMedia group.

The 14th annual survey, V&D 100, also said Bharti Airtel, with a revenue of Rs 36,962 crore, occupied the first position among the top 10 telecom club in the country, pushing BSNL to the second slot with flat revenues of Rs. 35,167 crore.

Reliance Communication and Vodafone retained their No. 3 and No. 4 position with revenues of Rs. 22,941 crore (growing at 23.1 per cent) and Rs. 22,224 crore (growing at 43.6 per cent). Idea Cellular, Tata Comm, TTSL, MTNL, Aircel, TTML are the other players in the top 10 list of telecom service providers.

The survey covered all segments of the telecom services industry from fixed line, cellular, national and international long distance telephony to broadband, VSAT, and radio trunking.

This took the Indian telecom industry’s equipment industry and services industry revenue to Rs. 2,72,069 crore (Rs. 1,14,527 crore plus Rs. 1,57,542 crore, respectively).

The industry has added over 130 million phones during the year taking the total no to 392 million at the end of 2009.

Cellular services contributed three-fifth to the telecom services revenues at Rs. 95,271 crore with Bharti Airtel leading this segment. National Long Distance (NLD) telephony was the fastest growing segment during the year at 48.2 per cent.

Cellular telephony registered a growth of 24.4 per cent in FY ‘09, compared to 36.4 per cent in the previous year. The decline in is attributed to falling ARPU in rural areas.

Mobile penetration in Delhi and Chennai crossed the 100 per cent mark and growth will now be driven by rural and smaller cities, with an inclination towards Value Added Services (VAS), reveals the Voice&Data survey.

Among the telecom players in the country, Nokia topped the list of ten followed by Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks and Alcatel Lucent. The other leaders are Huawei, Wipro, ZTE, Cisco, TCS and Infosys.

“The Indian telecom services market continues to defy the global recession, as the highest growing sector in the Indian economy, and the fastest-growing telecom market in the world. The recession proved to be a booster for telecom, as businesses and individuals chose communications tools over travel, to cut costs,” according to Prasanto K Roy, chief editor of CyberMedia publications.

He added that the Telecom services would continue its growth story this year, with 3G roll out and increasing use of data services.