The monopoly of state-owned service providers Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd in the public call office business is fast eroding. Private players are making steady inroads into this segment.
In fact, operators like Bharti, Tata Teleservices and Reliance Infocomm now account for close to 40 per cent of PCOs in India.
Additionally, BSNL's market share in this segment, which was over 74 per cent in September 2004 has come down to 54 per cent as of December 2005, according to the performance indicator report released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Monday.
Incidentally, the October-December 2005 period also marks the third consecutive quarter where private operators have set up more PCOs as compared to state-owned players.
However, the number of new PCOs that were set up has seen a dramatic slide. Only 82,945 were added during this quarter as compared to 702,674 in the July-September 2005 period and 177,836 in April-June 2005.
Decreased demand for PCOs can be attributed to the steep fall in cellular and fixed line tariffs and the phenomenal growth of mobile subscribers, said a BSNL official.
According to Trai, the total number of PCOs in the country has increased to 3.7 million, of which BSNL accounts for over 2 million and MTNL for 0.28 million. Reliance Infocomm has a PCO subscriber base of close to 0.7 million, followed by Tata Teleservices at 0.49 million and Bharti at 0.18 million.
Other private service providers in the fray include HFCL (the company offers services in Punjab) and Shyam Telelink, which offers telecom services in Rajasthan. HFCL has a PCO base of 40,874 while Shyam Telelink has 26,145 registered PCO customers, Trai added.
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