Apples vs Oranges

Incoming Calls

• Every year, Rs. 2,530 crore worth of international calls come to India...
• VSNL keeps Rs. 1840-2070 crore and passes the rest on to carriers and access providers like BSNL..
• Whereas private gateway Bharti and Data Access want to keep only Rs 920 crore and pass on the rest tocarriers and access providers..
• By sticking with VSNL carriers like BSNL lose Rs 920-1150 crore

[Incoming calls calculated as: 23 cents or Rs 11 per min (approx.); VSNL retention at Rs 8-9/min; Privategateways retention at Rs 4/min. Volume of total incoming calls: 2.3 billion minutes]

Out-going Calls

• For outgoing calls, VSNL keeps Rs 820 crore and passes Rs. 492 crore to BSNL...
• ...but Private gateways want to keep Rs 540 crore and pass on Rs 780 crore to BSNL
• So BSNL loses Rs 288 crore if it sticks with VSNL

[Outgoing calls calculated as: Total calls: 600 million minutes. Average consumer tarriff: Rs 22/min;VSNL's retention is Rs 13.80 per minute; pvt. gateways retention: Rs 9 per minute]

VSNL Version

• Settlement rates have fallen drastically from last year's 35 cents (Rs 18) to 20 cents (Rs 10).
• Has invested over Rs 2,500 crore in ILD compared to a reported Rs 30 crore of the other two players.
• ILD business loss will lead to reduced accruals for the government, who'll be final loser.