After posting a long string of good years, the telecom industry finally slowed down and grew by just 2.5 per cent in 2009-10. In revenue terms, the total collection during this period was Rs.1, 59,510 crore.

And the reason for this short fall is the rising competition and domestic tariff war, said a survey by the telecom industry that appeared in journal Voice & Data.

Considering the fact that the industry grew by 20 per cent in 2008-09, this is a very sharp decline.

The survey also showed that the decline in revenue was not only in the field of telecom service providers but was also seen in terms of cellular, fixed line, National Long Distance, International Long Distance, broadband, VSAT and Radio Trunking businesses.

Tariff war has been cited as the major reason and despite having a growth of 50 per cent in number of subscribers, the overall performance remained grim.

Most impactful was the introduction of 1 paisa per second, calling plan introduced by Tata DoCoMo that forced the other players to follow the suit. In the way they saw massive decline in revenue.