New players have struggled with their rollout plans and their rate of adding new subscribers has slowed down. Etisalat and Loop (except in Mumbai) are yet to launch commercial operations despite holding pan-India airwaves to launch mobile services for nearly three years. Videocon has launched in only five of the 22 circles. STel, another new player, is also exploring options to merge or buy out another telco as its licences are limited to just six small circles.
Uninor, STel, Loop, Etisalat DB, Videocon and Sistema together added less than 12% of 18 million customer additions in June, according to data released by Trai. This is in sharp contrast to last year’s numbers when Uninor added a million users within 30 days of launch. STel managed to clock one million subscribers in 90 days from three small circles. While Videocon added 1.39 million users in May, it could add only a third of that in June. The new entrants together account for less than 3% of India’s 600 million mobile users.
All new entrants — with the exception of Sistema Shyam — are under probe by both the Central Vigilance Commission as well as the Prime Minister’s Office for delaying the rollout of their operations. Telecom minister A Raja has been publicly flogged by Opposition parties for allegedly causing the exchequer an estimated loss of more than Rs 60,000 crore by awarding 2G licences to companies at throwaway prices.
Our comments; Due to low tariff, all 14 to 16 operators cannot survive in India. Though there may be usage by customers, returns from telecom operators is less. Rolling in all circles is a difficult task for new operators and so mergers and acquisitions may be there. This was informed earlier. Now this is going to happen. BSNL and MTNL will be there. So it is the utmost essential for all to increase the revenue of both corporations for our existence in the market. Shortly there will be 4 to 6 operators operating throughout India. See the article. to know more....
New-telcos-may-exit-set-off-consolidation
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