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About 185 lakh telephones have been added during April-January of the current year. Of these, in the month of January alone, more than 21 lakh phones were provided. With this addition, the total number of phones has crossed a level of 950 lakh, taking the tele-density from 7% in March 2004 to 8.79% at the end of January 2005.
The Mix of Mobile and Fixed Phones
About 87% of the additional phones during the current year are accounted for by the mobile phones. The number of mobile phones (including WLL (M)) as on January 31, 2005 is about 498 lakh. The share of mobile phones in the total number of telephones is shown below.
Private Sector has played a major role by accounting for 77.28% of the expansion during these ten months. The private sector has so far provided 443.41 lakh phones as on January 31, 2005, which is 47% of the total phones in the country.
Rural Telephony – BSNL is the contributor
However, in the rural areas, only Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has provided Direct Exchange Lines and VPTs. As against 5.83 lakh additional telephones provided in rural areas during April-January 2004, BSNL has provided 7.65 lakh telephones during the current year (i.e. April-December 2004). 4773 VPTs have also been provided by BSNL during the past ten months. Rs. 1200 crore disbursed during 2004-05 through USOF to the operators for rural telephony.
Important Decisions:
The following decisions were taken during January 2005:
(i) A letter on January 17, 2005 has been issued to all ISPs to discontinue the provision of VPN services within 30 days unless and otherwise permitted by the competent authority.
(ii) BSNL has reduced the tariff rates of International Bureau FAX Services for various countries in the range of 17% - 68%.
(iii) BSNL’s Broadband service, branded, as ‘Data One’ was launched on January 14, 2005 at Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Hyderabad simultaneously. MTNL also launched its Broad Band service at Delhi & Mumbai on the same day which was inaugurated by the Hon’ble Minister of Communications & IT.
(iv) Three ISP licences were issued during the month to M/s CRR Wireless Broadband Pvt. Ltd., M/s Infotips Technologies (India) Pvt. Ltd. and M/s Harisree Cablenet Pvt. Ltd. for Tirupati, Kerala and Kannur operations respectively increasing the number of licences issued till January 31, 2005 to 708.
(v) Four companies, namely, M/s Alliance Broadband Services Pvt. Ltd., M/s My Own Infotech Pvt. Ltd., M/s Micro Knowledge & Edutech Pvt. Ltd. and M/s Cellebrum.com Pvt. Ltd. were permitted to offer Internet Telephony for Kolkata, Surat, Gurgaon and Punjab respectively increasing the number of licences issued till January 31, 2005 to 130.
The performance of the sector is briefly given below:
RM/AMA – 030305 Performance
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