Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Saturday, Feb 04, 2006
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Saturday, Feb 04, 2006 |
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Telecommunications Info-Tech - Trends Tariffs are low, yet STD minutes are less Thomas K. Thomas
New Delhi , Feb. 3 DESPITE steep reduction in tariffs of mobile long distance calls, there has been no substantial increase in the minutes of usage. According to the data compiled by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the share of STD calls as a percentage of the total outgoing minutes of usage per month per subscriber has in fact dropped to 17 per cent compared with 21 per cent a year ago even as the share of local calls has increased from 78 per cent to 81 per cent. The share of international long distance calls also have reduced to below one per cent in the last year. Market watchers said that the drop in long distance usage among telephone subscribers could be as a result of an uptake in other means of making STD and ISD calls such as Internet telephony and calling cards. They also said that under-reporting by operators to avoid payment of access deficit charges and growing grey market in the long distance segment could also be another reason. In absolute numbers, while the average outgoing minutes of usage per month per subscribers has gone up from 106 minutes to 141 minutes, STD traffic has moved marginally from 21 minutes a month to 25 minutes and ISD traffic has remained at one minute per month. On the other hand, quantum of local calls has increased from 84 minutes per subscriber per month to 116 minutes. TRAI data also shows that a significant amount of long distance traffic is moving from fixed line telephone to cellular network. Market analysts, however, said that lack of uptake in long distance traffic is bad news for operators as they have been banking on an increase in traffic to compensate for the revenue hit resulting from decreasing tariffs.
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