Pagers count on policy changes to beep

pagers beeps are getting fainter by the day. in just a span of five years, the beeping device has fallen in status. today, the radio paging industry seems is crying for help gasping for a bail-out plan. unlike the cellular services, which is witnessing a phase consolidation with spate of mergers and acquisitions, paging operators are fighting for their survival with no fresh investment flowing in.the paging operators are not only facing a fast depleting subscribers base but are plagued with declining return on investments. reduced cellular rental coupled with low call rates is giving the paging companies hard time maintaining their services. as return on investment is low, most of the paging companies have not been able to pay their outstanding dues for the first three year of operations. in some cases government had to encash the companies bank guarantee to recover the licence fee. "earlier pagers were being carried by managing directors and upper level executives. today drivers, courier guys and other lower level staff are using it," said p n uppal, secretary general, indian paging service association. from a subscriber base of almost a million during its peak days, today it has gone down below 6 lakh. according to ipsa every month the industry is loosing 9-10 thousand users and a loss of almost rs 800 crore per annum. "as cellular phones have captured the upper segment, paging industry is concentrating on labour class segment. it will give an identity, an address to them who live in jhuggies and have migrate from other states to make a living here," uppal added. but even with a changed target audience, there are doubts whether pagers will regain their charm. most of the subscribers shy away from pagers as it is a one-way communication system - one can receive messages but cannot send. "it is the ability to compete with mobile telephones which has bagged 90 million subscribers in china and 45 million in usa. in india, the cellular rentals are less than pagers and so are the phone instruments. so who will opt for paging services," said praveen kumar, managing director, mobilink. few years back even giving paging instrument for free did not help. the industry pinned their hope on activation charges from these instruments but most of them were used as toys. "the only way paging industry can be revived is by changing the policies towards it. from the beginning paging industry was given a step motherly treatment. while cellular services got one concession after other, we were left to make our own roads," said a s narayanan, managing director, easy call. government on its part has recognised industry problems and is looking into the viability of the paging services. earlier this year telecom regulatory authority of india (trai) had suggested low licence fees, no entry fee for operators, roaming between different paging service areas and connectivity between service providers in the same service area. according to the service operators, when the telecom sector was opened both cellular and pagers where given equal treatment. however, later the cellular operators managed to get more concessions from the government. not only were they given licence fee waivers, but they were also allowed to share revenue with the basic operators. radio paging service operators have been asking for a complete waiver of the outstanding dues for the first three years of service and revenue sharing model for with the basic operators. they are also demanding complete waiver of the licence fee similar to what has been given to internet service providers. at present the licence fee for the 4th and 5th year has been fixed at 5 per cent and will be equal to this or less than this from 6th year onwards. acknowledging competition from the cellular mobile services, trai had also recommended revenue sharing by mutual agreement with the access providers. "the paging industry generates almost 2.5 million calls per month. the pulse rate for this is rs 1.20. we are asking to double the pulse rate to rs 2.40 and give the additional rs 1.20 generated to the paging industry. this will help a partial revival," said uppal. ipsa has also been demanding the removal of 5 per cent service tax for few years. "government can reimpose the tax once we are in a better position," they said. according to ipsa the paging rentals have to be reduced from the current rs 300 to rs 150 or less so that the masses can afford it. "if we can offer then our services less than rs 150, not only the volumes go up but our bottom line also improve," said uppal. in the beginning pagers came for more than rs 5000 and additional rs 1,000 as activation charges had to be paid part from a monthly rental of rs 150. this was raised to rs 250 and now it is rs 300 per month but activation charges have been removed and the instrument comes as cheap as rs 2,000. the whole matter has been passed on to the tariff commission. the commission is looking into the viability of the paging industry. but it is not expected to come before three month from now as the tedious task of going through documents and understanding the industry is being carried out. operators say till the tariff commission report comes, they cannot do anything about reducing the rentals or work on any revival plan. according to them revenue sharing is the only silver lining. but the idea has not found support from either the basic service providers - mtnl, vsnl or bsnl nor the cellular operators.