Unsurprising news of the week

India's Communications & IT Minister: summoned to explain falling revenues at BSNL

To my mind, the least surprising news item so far this week comes from Mansi Taneja of India's Business Standard, who reports that state-owned Indian state-owned telco BSNL is likely to exit a consortium that has been aiming to acquire a 46% in pan-MEA mobile group Zain. According to Taneja, MTNL, the other public sector operator party to the consortium, is also likely to exit since it had agreed to follow BSNL’s lead in the deal.

DevelopingTelecomsWatch has no axe to grind with regard to these two telecoms enterprises, but it won't have escaped the notice of regular readers that this blog has observed some pretty strong criticisms of their performance in their domestic market, most notably in an article written in August.

It was partly with these criticisms in mind that DTW was unsurprised when Etisalat rather than BSNL prevailed in the scramble to acquire the Sri Lankan mobile operator previously owned by Millicom International Cellular. It would, then, cause raised eyebrows at DTW HQ were MTNL to win what looks to be a hotly contested scramble to buy a controlling interested in Zambia's soon-to-be-privatised incumbent fixed line operator, Zamtel. As a recent Cellular News item points out, the list of other interested parties contains some formidable names including Orascom Telecom, Telkom of South Africa and Russia's pan-CIS cellco Vimpelcom, which has recently expanded its footprint into Southeast Asia.

Lest anyone feel that this blog returning quite regularly to the troubles of India's two major state-owned telecoms enterprises is somehow unwarranted, it is worth noting that concern about their prospects has been expressed in the highest circles in the south Asian country. Monday's Economic Times, for example, reported that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is likely to meet the BSNL's management along with Communications and IT Minister A. Raja to look into the causes of the company's falling revenues and to find ways to improve its performance.

According to the Economic Times, BSNL says the loss in net profit and revenue is due to huge wage costs and customers deciding to terminate their fixed line subscriptions. The article states that the company has been struggling with the problem of landlines being surrendered for years now, due to a combination of the increasing popularity of mobile phone and its own service levels falling below customer expectations. In the past three years, the article reports, 6.3 million landline connections have been terminated.

This blog has also documented the company's struggles to capitalise on first-mover advantage in the 3G mobile services space or to take make much of a similar head start with WiMAX broadband services.

In light of all this, DTW remains wary of any claims that BSNL makes about ambitions to grow its business into unfamiliar overseas territories.

Unsurprising news of the week