New Delhi: India's telecom industry far outpaces the IT industry in terms of revenues. While the telecom sector generated a revenue of $12 billion last year, the total output of the IT sector (including exports) was $8 billion. These were the findings of sixth Voice and Data (V&D) 100 annual survey of the communications industry for the year 1999-2000.The survey revealed that spurred by liberalised policies and a resurgent economy, the telecom industry has grown by 22 per cent in 1999-2000 to reach a combined turnover of Rs 53,173.5 crore in 1999-2000 from Rs 43,609.4 crore in the previous year.
The survey analysed 18 segments, from telecom to datacom, and covered 600 companies dealing with communications products and services. Its findings state that the developments on international gateways, Domestic Long Distance (DLD), and broadband networks provided the impetus to the telecom infrastructure segment, in which the top 10 companies generated a turnover of Rs 5,133.90 crore. As per the survey, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), has emerged as the undisputed leader with a turnover of Rs 20,405.8 crore from basic service, in this fiscal year.
The findings show that VSNL is the biggest communications company with a turnover of Rs 7,272 crore, followed by MTNL at Rs 5,385.9 crore and ITI at Rs 2,060.5 crore. Other communications giants that figured in the V&D Top ten company rankings, include Sterlite Industries at Rs 920 crore, and TCIL at Rs 740 crore turnover.
Revenue-wise, the cellular market in India grew by 80 per cent in 1999-2000, to touch Rs 2,252 crore, with a base of over 18.8 lakh subscribers. Bharti Cellular was the top player in the services sector, with a revenue of Rs 210 crore. Of this, sales from the organized handset market aggregated at Rs 336 crore in terms of revenue. In the Rs 200 crore-paging services market, the survey said that DSS Mobile emerged as the market leader with a turnover of Rs 54.75 crore in 1999-2000.
In basic service, Bharti Telenet with 88,000 subscribers emerged as the leading private service provider in 1999-2000. However, in terms of revenues, Hughes Telecom was the leader with a revenue of Rs 67.01 crore. In the Internet services segment, the subscriber base increased to 9.6 lakh in 1999-2000 as compared to 2.4 lakh in the previous year. Again, this increase was a result of positive government initiatives and price war between various ISPs. As per the survey, the growth is expected to continue to reach 20 lakh by next year. VSNL, with a subscriber base of 3.43 lakh, was the leading ISP, followed by Satyam Infoway and DTS.
The networking products market (including routers, hubs, NICs, switches, modems, etc.) was estimated to be Rs 2,790 crore.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.