The Hindu Business Line : 55,000 new fixed line connections added in Feb

Fixed wire-line telephone seems to be back in vogue with operators adding nearly 55,000 new connections in the month of February. Thanks to an uptake in broadband and investments being made by the private operators, fixed line segment has witnessed a slow but steady growth over the last few months.

The overall fixed telephone segment, which also includes fixed wireless telephone has also moved up by 2.5 lakh users in February.

While Bharti Tele-Ventures has added nearly 44,000 new connections each in January and February, Reliance Infocomm has added 8,784 fixed line users in January and another 6,622 in February. The other major fixed line operator Tata Teleservices has added about 21,049 connection in January and 4,656 new users in February.

This comes even as the state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd have reported a near-static growth in fixed wireline user base. While the growth numbers being reported by the private operators are nowhere near the mobile growth, industry estimates that the numbers are going to pick up in the next few months.

"We estimate 70 million connections by 2007 on the fixed line segment.

Private operators are rolling out aggressively to meet the challenges posed by a lucrative broadband market which is making fixed line telephony attractive," said Mr S.C. Khanna, Secretary General, Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India.

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