(17 April 2007 8:00 pm)

NEW DELHI: Even before the declaration of the current year as 'the Year of the Broadband' by President A P J Abdul Kalam, the Broadband subscriber base reached crossed two million in the quarter ending December 2006 by registering a growth of
11.12 per cent.

The overall growth for the year December 2005 to December 2006 in the wire-line and wireless sector was 52.2 per cent.

According to Quarterly Performance Indicators of Telecom Services for the quarter ending December 2006 released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the wireless Market grew at a high of 15.5 per cent by adding
20.08 million subscribers. Broadband subscriber base grew to 2.019 million.

Internet Subscribers base reached 8.547 million in the quarter by registering a growth of 5.9 per cent.

The gross subscriber base of the wire-line and wireless services together reached 189.92 million in the quarter ending December 2006 from 170.02 million as on September 30, showing an increase of 11.7 per cent during the quarter.

(In the case of figures supplied by seven service providers in broadcasting and Cable, the maximum number of pay channels, free to air channels, and local channels remained the same at 241 between September and December, while it improved marginally at the minimum level from 74 to 86 channels.)

The tele-density in the quarter ending December 2006 reached 17.16 compared to 15.41 in the previous quarter ending September 2006.

The subscriber base for wireless services increased from 129.54 million to 149.62 million while that of Fixed Line service decreased from 40.5 million to 40.3 million.

Internet subscriber base at the end of the quarter was 8.582 million as compared to 8.096 million during the preceding quarter, registering an increase of 6%.

The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd continued its hold at the top position with a market share of 44.6% followed by Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. with 19.4% of share.

The number of Broadband subscribers (with a download speed of 256 Kbps or more) was 2.054 million as on December 31 with a growth rate of 13.04% over the previous quarter.

The Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) for dial up Internet subscribers was Rs.205 for the quarter ending December. The Minutes of Usage (MoU) for dial-up access per subscriber /month was 190 minutes.

The number of Public Call Offices (PCO) in the country increased to 5.3 million from 5.12 million by registering a growth of 3.51 per cent in the last quarter of the calendar year 2006.

Rural Wireline subscriber base came down from 12.56 million in the earlier quarter to 12.48 million in the quarter ending December 2006, thus registering a negative growth of 0.64 per cent.

The number of Village Public Telephones (VPT) in the country increased to 5,59,000 from 5,52,000 registering a growth of 1.26 per cent.

The all India blended ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) per month for GSM services declined by 6.2% from Rs.377 in the earlier quarter to Rs.316 in the last quarter of 2006. ARPU for GSM post paid service declined by 1.7% from Rs.643 in September to Rs.632 in December. ARPU for GSM prepaid declined by 5.3% from Rs.277 in September to Rs.262 in December.

The All India blended ARPU (per month) for CDMA services for the quarter ending December was Rs.196 as against Rs.215 for the quarter ending September, registering a negative growth of 8.83%. Monthly ARPU for CDMA Postpaid segment was Rs.456 and for CDMA prepaid segment was Rs.159.

The performance of the Basic Service Providers improved marginally as compared to the previous quarter in provision of telephones, fault incidences, fault repair, and so on, while it was more significant in the case of cellular services.