As it is happening in its other circles, Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) is witnessing a decline in its fixed line business in the Andhra Pradesh circle too. The public sector behemoth's fixed line connections in fact dwindled in the past six months.
For instance, the company had 7.2 lakh fixed line subscribers as of March this year, but the number shrank to 7 lakh in the past six months even after taking into account the new additions.
State-wide, the company's fixed line subscriber base presently stands at 31.6 lakh, which is almost stagnant since the past one year.
Admitting that there is a significant fall in takers for fixed line connections, Sanjeev Kumar, the new chief general manager (CGM) of BSNL's Andhra Pradesh circle, said at a press conference that the company was compensating the loss in fixed line numbers with a substantial growth in the cellular and wireless in local loop (WLL) subscriber base.
BSNL presently has 4.76 lakh cellular subscribers (3.46 lakh subscribers in pre-paid and 1.3 lakh in post-paid) in the state. It has about 44,000 customers in the WLL category.
