After nearly two decades, the country’s largest telecom generous BSNL missed out on imposing a hat -trick of profits. According to Mint’s report, government telecom company BSNL has incurred a loss of Rs 1,049 crore in the June quarter. Earlier, the company had a profit of Rs 280 crore in the March quarter and Rs 262 crore in the December quarter. At the same time, the loss of June quarter is pointing to a big upset. BSNL has lost 24 percent in the operational revenue, which has come down to Rs 5,029.6 crore.
This deficit occurred at a time when the total expenses have seen a decline except for the employee cost of the government telecom company. The total expenditure decreased by 9.4 percent to 6,840 crores. Employee Cost, which is 38.6 per cent of its revenue, has increased by 39 per cent to Rs 1,940 crore. However, on a year-on-year basis, BSNL has suffered a lower loss than the same quarter last year, which was Rs 1,542 crore. On the other hand, revenue has seen a 14.5 percent increase in revenue, which was 4,392.6 crore in the same quarter of last year. The main reason for this is the introduction of 4G services on about 1,00,000 sites and low tariffs.
Why did the company suffer losses
In a statement issued on May 27, the Ministry of Communication said that in the coming year, the growth in the operation will continue to grow in revenue-both of them are important for continuous professionalism. The ministry had said that although large capes and spectrum investment could reduce pats in the next financial year, these investments are expected to promote growth and professionalism.
Scindia gave target
Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia held a meeting with the CGM of all the circles of BSNL on 28 July. After that it was said in the press conference that it is not important to see operational cash flow or net profit. It is important to see customer satisfaction. It is important to look at customer base growth, upset of products and cross-celling.
Scindia had asked BSNL officials to keep a target of 50 per cent in their mobile service business in 2026 and 25-30 per cent in the enterprise segment. The minister had asked BSNL to improve customer satisfaction and add more customers to increase the average revenue ie ARPU towards him, which is a major scale of growth of any telecom company.
Emphasis on capex
The monthly ARPU of BSNL varies from different circles. Scindia said that in some circles, ARPU is Rs 40-45, while in others ARPU is Rs 175 per month. On August 13, the Department of Telecommunications quoted Scindia in a post on X as saying that the government has planned to increase the cash of Rs 47,000 for the telecom company. According to TRAI data, by the end of June, BSNL had 90.46 million mobile customers, which is 91.06 million less than 0.6 million by the end of March. The customer base increased by about 5.5 million compared to June 2024, when the company had 85.6 million users.