Kolkata cell cos grapple with low numbers

Kolkata's cellular phone subscriber base, growing at more than 50 per cent year on year, continue to be the lowest among the four metros.

However, not all the operators in the city appear to be in a rush to take steps to push sales in Kolkata given its resident population of 1.3 crore.

According to GSM operators, new tariff cuts and lower entry cost would speed up penetration.

Ajay Puri, CEO-east of GSM company Bharti Airtel, admitted, "Mobile penetration levels by operators in Kolkata is probably a year behind other metros like Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai. But due to more and more localised tariff plans being rolled out, Kolkata is likely to catch up with the rest in a matter of a year. For instance, Airtel has this 15 paise local tariff and Re 1 per minute STD tariff structures for users of Kolkata, not available nationally."

Abhijit Pal, COO of the CDMA service provider Tata Teleservices in eastern India, said that fewer number of telephone lines per some 100 people or teledensity itself has hindered subscriber growth in Kolkata.

Kolkata at present has a teledensity of 40 per cent while in other metros it is 70 per cent.

"The industry average for subscriber addition in Kolkata is 1.5 lakh per month, higher than all other metros, which would help Kolkata touch the 70 per cent teledensity soon," Pal said.

Neither CDMA provider Reliance Communications nor GSM provider BSNL were available for comment.

According to Sridhar Rao, CEO of GSM service company Hutch-East, significant drop in tariffs would push up the mobile subscriber base in Kolkata.

"Customer-friendly tariffs and offers started off in Kolkata as late as 2005. So although the growth has been more than double, the base still remains small because telecom companies began activities rather late," Rao said.

According to the GSM standard industry body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), Kolkata had 36 lakh GSM subscribers as on June 2007, while Delhi had 85 lakh GSM users, Bombay had 72 lakh and Chennai 41 lakh users as on June 2007.

Between June 2006 and June 2007, Kolkata's GSM subscriber base grew by 52 per cent, next only to Chennai which grew by 55 per cent, while Delhi and Mumbai subscriber base for GSM grew at 39 and 21 per cent respectively.

According to GSM sector sources, more than 50 per cent growth in cellular subscribers in Kolkata is because the base itself is smaller compared to Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai.

According to the CDMA standard industry body Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUSPI), Tata Teleservices in Kolkata had a digital mobile subscriber base of 707121 as on June 2007, up from 391857 users as on June 2006.

While Tata Teleservices in Delhi reported a digital mobile subscriber base of 1,858,649 as on June 2007, with Mumbai and Chennai reporting a digital mobile subscriber base of 811,476 and 166,104 respectively as on June 2007.

Reliance Communications in Kolkata, moved up from a digital mobile subscriber base of 885618 users in June 2006 to 1,064,657 users as on June 2007.

However, Reliance Communications in Delhi reported a subscriber base of 1,728,650 in June 2007 for digital mobile, while Mumbai and Chennai had a digital mobile subscriber base of 1,950,918 and 680,887 respectively as on June 2007.

Going forward, as the telecommunications needs of subscribers are expected to become increasingly sophisticated, the wireless industry is expected to see increased demand for value-added services (VAS) like music messaging and voice recognition products.

This trend would be enhanced by the development and supply of new data-enabled handsets at lower prices.

Revenues from VAS are expected to bridge the gap created by the fall in ARPUs triggered by a reduction in tariffs.

Nationally GSM had 13.59 crore connections as on June 2007.

The GSM number in June 2006 was 7.84 crore connections.

Bengal telecom circle, at present, has a population of 7 crore, while Kolkata has population of 1.3 crore.