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| BSNL: Betrayed Service, Not Loyal | | | Munish Gupta
Jammu | Sept 17
In the race of its quantitative expansion, the BSNL appears to have made up its mind to hurt –emotionally and economically –lakhs of its loyal subscribers and completely write off the word “quality” from its scheme of operations.
Despite classy allurements and irresistible service facilities offered by the competitors, the BSNL subscribers of the land line era refused to shift their loyalties enmasse. Now when the BSNL authorities have shut their eyes and ears to their loyalists, the subscribers have already started banking on its competitors for the cellphone while waiting for the alternate landline options.
The relation between the BSNL and its consumers has never been as simple as a service provider and a subscriber. It has always been more of emotional and value based relation which is now being overlooked by the Corporation which of late has become a highly competitive and insensitive corporate giant.
Here is small list of few of the problems BSNL subscribers have been made to suffer –landline bill has a specific warning that extra charges shall be levied if paid after the specific deadline…interestingly bill reaches the consumer well after expiry of deadline; the extra charges are levies but still the connection is taken out of order; when complaint is booked at the care center, customer gets a complaint number but there is no redress even for next ten days.
And look at the cell phone service, the worst is yet to come. BSNL launched its service well ahead of any of its competitor. But today others seem to have managed to overtake BSNL in terms of subscribers and claims to be No.1 service provider in J&K State
With the Bharatiya Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) sleeping over the issue of making the organization fully responsive, there is no one to hear the woes of the telephone consumers who have been facing the acute problems since a pretty long time now. Though the BSNL is boasting of its achievements every now and then, but it is a pity that the Corporation is not paying the attention to improve the functioning of the system. Moreover, the promises made by it with the consumers from time to time like making the entire system fool proof are barely fulfilled.
Cellone, the mobile telephone service of the Bharatiya Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), has virtually come to a standstill with most of the time the mobile users finding the network busy.
A large number of complaints continued to pour in the office of Early Times for the past few days from the Cellone users, who said that the mobile services have been rendered defunct with a call taking 10 to 15 minutes to mature.
Almost all the BSNL subscribers, for whom mobile phone is indispensable, carry two mobile phones, one with BSNL SIM card and other one with the SIM card of other service provider. This is because earlier, as there was no other service provider; everybody had no other choice but to take BSNL SIM card.
According to Rahul , BSNL subscriber, other service providers entered J&K and BSNL service started going from bad to worse, he has purchased SIM cards of other service providers to make calls as it is next to impossible to make a call from BSNL SIM card. To carry BSNL SIM card is a compulsion as mobile number circulated among the friends or business or official circles is that of BSNL as it was the first service provider in the State.
It is next to impossible to call somebody from BSNL sim during the peak hours, either the message displayed on the instrument will be connection error or the message heard in creek voice will be "The network is busy, please call after some time" or "This channel is busy, and please call after some time". The audio quality is very poor and one conversation will take at least 5-6 dial-ups as call automatically drops after 50 secs to 1.5 minute. It is almost next to impossible to talk to somebody from BSNL sim card continuously for 10 mins without call dropping stated Manavi another BSNL subscriber. She also added that many a times speech is one way only and the other interesting feature of BSNL is that in between a conversation of two BSNL sim cards, you can be connected to any other caller from BSNL sim card or at times, you can listen to conversation between two BSNL sim card callers for good about a minute or so. On top of all, due to some software problem, inflated bills are being raised to the consumers who hardly get to use this defunct service.
Gourav stated that "Most of the time the network remains busy while sometimes the network conveys that the mobile phone has been switched off or is not reachable. This comes even when the Cellone holder’s mobile is very much on and he is well within the range", the consumers lamented. "While the BSNL authorities are very quick to send the bills, they are not bothered to improve the services which, instead of improving, were turning bad to worse", he charged.
Worst is the mobile services in Canal road, Bakshi Nagar, Rehari Colony, New Plots and parts of Gandhi Nagar, where the signal is very poor right from the day the services were launched by the BSNL.
When contacted, the GM Mobile of BSNL J&K Circle, AK Mittal told EARLY TIMES, that the Corporation is seized of the issues and efforts are on to plug in the loopholes.
On asking about the quality of audible voice quality and disconnection of phones while talking he stated that it may occurred sometimes duet congestion or poor signals in some of the areas.
Adding to it he said that that due to two months long agitation we have gone four months back , the work on installing mobile towers could not be executed. He, however, said that by December end or January, 2009, the BSNL would be able to increase the strength of its towers from 575 to around 800 across the State. "The work on Mobile Switching Centres is also going on to increase the capacity which will reduce the network related problems upto a large extent", he added. |
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