The market for telecom services touched Rs 50,000 crore in 2002-03, according to the eighth National Telecom Survey report released yesterday.
The communication services market in India grew 5.11 per cent to Rs 50,358 crore in 2002-03 from Rs 47,908 crore in the previous year.
Even as basic services -- the bread and butter of the telecom services industry -- grew only 9 per cent in 2002-03, revenues in the mobile telephony segment grew 50.53 per cent. The mobile segment added 7.75 million new subscribers in both the GSM and CDMA lines.
The services covered in the survey include basic services, cellular services, national and international long-distance, Internet services, V-SAT services and radio trunk services. It also included radio paging, infrastructure, unified messaging, voice mail and audiotex services.
According to the Survey, while basic services contributed 57 per cent to the total services industry of Rs 50,358 crore last year, the fast growing cellular was a distant second with a 16 per cent contribution to the industry's top line.
Other significant contributors were the national long distance (12 per cent) and international long distance services (11 per cent).
The long distance segment, in fact, reported a 21 per cent decline in turnover on account of a significant drop in the tariffs. Even though not in really good shape, at Rs 1,285 crore the Internet services business still accounted for 2.5 per cent of the industry.
As per the Survey, BSNL remained the top service provider in the country with a turnover of Rs 27,500 crore. However, growing competition in the market restricted its year-on-year growth to just two per cent.
It was a bad year for MTNL (Rs 6,022 crore) and VSNL (Rs 4,183 crore), the service providers at number 2 and number 3 respectively. While MTNL registered a decline of six per cent in its turnover, VSNL's revenues declined 32 per cent.
Bharti Televentures emerged as the fourth largest contributor to the industry with a turnover of Rs 3,083 crore. Idea cellular (Rs 1080 crore), Hutchison Max Telecom (Rs 711 crore), Data Access (Rs 632 crore), Spice Communications (Rs 550 crore), BPL Mobile (Rs 522 crore) and Hutchison Essar Telecom (Rs 483 crore) were the other names in the top ten service providers.
In the ILD space, VSNL was at the top followed by Data Access and Bharti Telesonic. The NLD business remained the domain leader with BSNL grossing a turnover of Rs 5,500 crore from the segment.
Cellular service was dominated by Bharti Cellular which had 3.07 million subscribers. BSNL a relatively new entrant in the cellular service sector ended the year at the number 2 position with 2.25 million subscribers.
The Hutchison group was at number 3 with 2.16 million subscribers. HECL emerged as the top VSAT service provider of the year 2002-03 followed by Comsat Max and Bharti Broadband.
