New Delhi, Nov. 19 -- State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has continued its loss trajectory for the second straight quarter in the current financial year after a brief return to profitability in last two quarters of fiscal 2025. In the September quarter, BSNL reported a net loss of Rs.1,357 crore, wider than Rs.1,048 crore in the preceding quarter and the Rs.1,241.7 crore it lost in the year-ago quarter, the company's financial statements dated 14 November show. BSNL's higher losses can be attributed to an increase in depreciation and amortization expenses, network operating expenses, and finance cost for the company. Depreciation and amortization in the quarter gone by stood at Rs.2,477 crore, 57% more than the figure for the year-ago quarter. It was 14.5% more that the preceding quarter. The company's revenue from operations during the quarter rose 2.8% sequentially and 6.6% year-on-year to Rs.5,166.7 crore largely led by increase in revenues from mobile phone services on the back of a launch of 4G services by the company. BSNL has 92.3 million mobile subscribers at end-September, Scindia had said last month. This would rank it behind bigger rivals Reliance Jio's 506 million, Bharti Airtel (364 million), and Vodaone Idea (196.7 million). Communications minister Jyotiraditya Scindia had flagged the expanded depreciation at a media briefing last month. "We (BSNL) may not be able to see that run rate of profitability going forward, as the company did a capex (capital expenditure) of Rs.25,000 crore in FY25 and there will be a close to Rs.2,500 crore non-cash hit to the bottomline due to depreciation," Scindia had said then. BSNL has set a target to grow revenues by 20% in FY26 to Rs.27,500 crore. It had posted a revenue of around Rs.23,000 crore in FY25. Queries emailed to Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and BSNL did not elicit any response till press time. The latest quarterly loss at BSNL signals the multiple problems at the company, an expert said. "One is the brand is not easily visible and accessible in the country compared to private operators and second is the quality of services at which it really lags," said Faisal Kawoosa, chief analyst at Techarc, a technology market research and consulting firm. According to Kawoosa, a turnaround for BSNL is difficult looking at the way the operations are run and huge dependency on the government fiscal measures. "There is nothing at stake for BSNL employees and management compared to private operators who are taking the business seriously," he said. Notably, employee bills which used to constitute the highest 43% of the company's revenue from operations in the year-ago period now accounts for 37% of the company's revenue. This came about with the change in the company's practice last year to move employee expenses towards 'Capital Work-in-Progress' (CWIP). In response to Mint's queries in May, BSNL had clarified that "it is common in the telecom industry to capitalize relevant overheads during periods of large network expansion"....