The Hindu Business Line : DoT raps MTNL for slow growth in cellular base

ALARMED at the slow growth in its cellular subscriber base, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has asked Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) to take immediate steps to beef up the performance. The company has been asked to submit milestones, which will have to be strictly adhered to, and responsibility fixed for failure.

According to official sources, the company has also been asked to prepare a report on the readiness for expansion of mobile services and submit category-wise outstanding and figures of the revenue collection efficiency. That apart, MTNL will need to improve its quality of service by optimising the base transceiver stations (BTS) for this purpose.

They pointed out that drastic steps have been called for overhauling the cellular services, and public perception regarding the quality of services, particularly since the company has managed to add only 85,000 subscribers in both the "high growth" metros - Delhi and Mumbai- during the past one year (January-December 2003), even as the private operators have increased their tally by 21.75 lakhs during the same period.

The last time that MTNL had been questioned by the DoT regarding the slow growth performance, close to six months back, the excuse that had been given was that the billing system was faulty and needed to be replaced. However, despite the most attractive tariff structure, customers still prefer the private operators services.

In fact in its latest tariff restructuring, MTNL has also waived caller line identifications charges and reduced SMS rates to just 25 paise per message. It has also reached roaming agreements with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) which has the largest telephone network in the country. The results though have been far from satisfactory.

The latest subscriber statistics show that both Bharti (in Mumbai) and Idea Cellular (in Delhi) who started offering the services close to year after MTNL managed to overtake it in only a couple of months. At present, while Bharti has 4.78 lakh customers in Mumbai, Idea Cellular has close to 4.21 lakhs in Delhi. On the other hand MTNL has only 1.68 customers and 1.56 lakh customers in both the circles respectively. During the past twelve months while Bharti managed to add 2.66 lakh customers, Idea Cellular added 2.93 lakh customers.

The performance of the first and second operators in both the circles are much more impressive.

In Delhi, Bharti has added 4.97 lakh additional customers taklign its subscriber tally to 13.31 lakhs while Hutch has added 4.46 additional subscribers taking its tally to 10.26 lakhs.

In Mumbai on the other hand, Hutch has managed to add 3.92 lakh additional subscribers taking its base to 10.07 lakhs, while BPL mobile has added 2.66 lakh new customers totalling its base to 4.78 lakhs.

In comparison, MTNL has fallen way behind, although it did manage to give them a run for their money when the services were first launched two years ago. The company failed to capitalise on the advantage it had, and efforts will have to be made to recover lost ground, the sources noted.