The telecom services industry posted a meagre growth rate of 2.5 per cent in revenues at Rs 1,59,510 crore in 2009-10 due to intense domestic tariff war, says a survey by telecom industry journal Voice & Data.

The industry had seen a robust growth of 20 per cent in revenues at Rs 1,55,683 crore in 2008-09.

The survey said these telecom services revenue include revenue from cellular, fixed line, National Long Distance, International Long Distance, broadband, VSAT and Radio Trunking businesses.

Intense tariff war caused the steep fall and overall slowdown in performance across segments, including cellular services that have been leading the telecom services sector growth in the past several years, Voice & Data said in a statement.

Despite a near 50 per cent subscriber growth, the mobile services segment grew a meagre 3.6 per cent to Rs 96,860 crore from Rs 93,522 crore.

Tariff cuts and introduction of 1 paisa per second calling introduced by new players forced leading players to cut rates.

The cellular services market that grew at 36.4 per cent just two years ago, thus providing momentum to the Indian telecom revolution, is now set for exciting times, it said.

Thanks to the mobile telephony revolution, one in every two Indians owns a mobile phone. Three mobile operators -? Bharti, Reliance and Vodafone -- now boast of a subscriber base of over 100 million eac, it said.

The subscriber base for fixed line in the country is languishing at 36.96 million.

The study expects competition to become more intense with 14 active mobile players trying every trick in the trade to stave off negative growth.

Though most top cities have statistically achieved near 100 per cent mobile penetration, it is estimated that nearly 20 per cent of the mobile subscribers are inactive.

It was found that in 2009-10 nearly three-fifths of the new additions came from rural areas and it is expected new customers in future would come mostly from rural markets.

For the fixed line phone business, 2009-10 was another year of negative growth with revenues dropping by nearly a quarter (23.3 per cent) to Rs 18,900 crore. While top three fixed line players ? BSNL, MTNL and Bharti Airtel ? reported a revenue decline, others like Reliance Communications, TTSL and TTML posted growth in revenues.

The International Long Distance segment posted a 17.3 per cent growth to touch revenue of Rs 17,600 crore, it said.