The Calcutta Telephones unit of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd saw its profit for the year to March 31, 2008, shrink to Rs 23 crore from Rs 187 crore in the previous year after it had to merge 50% of the dearness allowance with the basic salary of its 12,000-odd employees, according to SK Chakrabarty, chief general manager of the Kolkata circle.
“We are not in the red yet, but in the last fiscal, the payment of Rs 60 crore has reduced our profit margin,” he said .
He could not provide further details since the final figures are yet to come in.
A senior BSNL official said that, in 2007-08, Calcutta Telephones reported flat revenues of around Rs 1150 crore.
“The reduced profit has much to do with the failure to increase market share in mobile telephony and not-so-good performance in areas like broadband, landline and customer services,”he said.
BSNL has lost around 100,000 mobile telephony customers in the last one year, he said. One reason is the strict rule of BSNL to disconnect prepaid service of a subscriber once the validity period ends, said Chakravarty. Aound 75 % of the BSNL subscribers are in the prepaid category.
“Private operators don’t follow this rule. Most of the time private operators continue to show the subscriber’s name even if the validity is over. We can’ do this,” he said.
In June 2008, Calcutta Telephones had added just 951 customers in the mobile segment as against 16,538 by Bharti Airtel and 50,065 by Vodafone.
BSNL Kolkata’s total mobile telephony subscriber base till June 2008 was 10,46,874 as against 21,26,405 of Vodafone and 18,69,376 of Bharti Airtel.
SK Bhaduri, general manager for customer care, said they have already spoken to BSNL headquarters and the private operators numbers will be closer to reality once these problems are sorted out.