Private Mobile Radio Trunking Services: PSTN-connectivity at last?

A year of consolidation and hope.

The Private Mobile Radio Trunking Services (PMRTS) industry was coming into its own in the communications industry last year. As a niche segment, this industry managed to attract some attention from the communications regulator, TRAI, and the licensor, DoT, at last. TRAI came out with some welcome recommendations, such as allowing PSTN connectivity and interconnectivity between systems; and suggesting a changeover to digital technologies. This development came as a recognition of the significant role played by this industry.

Looking at this segment from a performance point of view, it is still very small. The industry comprised of barely ten active service providers. During last fiscal, one saw a major player exiting the market, and three significant players being acquired by the formidable Zee group. This had a healthy effect on the industry as subscriber base swelled up to 24,345. This was a growth of 26 percent compared to the previous fiscal when the subsciber base was barely 19,269. What was even more significant was that some positive indications started emerging from the revenue point of view. The total turnover grew 20 percent from Rs 29.75 crore in 1999-00, to Rs 35.80 crore during the last fiscal. That this services segment was maturing was indicated by the fact that services formed 70 percent of revenue, as against 10 percent of radio handset sales. This is an improvement from the previous fiscal’s 62 percent share and a much lower 43 percent during 1998-99.

The average price of a mobile radio trunking handset during last year was Rs 15,000. And the total handset market stood at Rs 10.65 crore, Motorola commanding more than 80 percent of the market.

15,000—which is four to five time costlier than an ordinary dial-up modem.

Gateways Populate the Skyline

An important milestone during the last fiscal was the establishment of a huge number of private and shared international Internet gateways by the ISPs. The government had given the go-ahead during the previous year. By the end of the fiscal, there were more than 25 ISPs who had set up their own international gateways, in addition to the bandwith from VSNL. Many like Satyam Infoway, Bharti BT Internet, Data Access, and Wipronet, had set up gateways in more than one city.

Yet another welcome step came in the form of permission to private ISPs to set up their own submarine cable landing station and bring in under-sea cable-based bandwidth into the country. And towards the course of the fiscal, two serious aqua-bandwidth players emerged in the form of the Bharti-Singtel combine and the Dishnet-Tyco combine. At the end of the year the total Internet bandwidth subscribed in the country stood at a little more than 1 Gbps.