Improve services, win back people confidence: Telecom Minister to BSNL

NEW DELHI: Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has asked state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) to improve its services and ensure that better quality of signal is maintained specially in the border and extremism affected areas.

At a meeting with the members of Parliament from the states of Bihar, Meghalaya, Manipur and Nagaland, he said that

the Government is committed to revive BSNL and numbers of initiatives are in the pipeline to bring it back to the position of market leader.

The meeting was part of the series of meetings planned to make telecom officials directly answerable to the parliamentary representatives so as to have a firsthand account of public sectors performance, problems faced and possible solutions.

He said the management of BSNL will also be expected to regain lost confidence of people by improving services and response.

He said a major initiative has been launched by BSNL to improve quality of signal for which it plans to add another 1,150 towers during this fiscal in Bihar alone.

Members of Parliament from the States of Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and North Eastern States participated in the first meeting.

Prasad has directed the Department to call five such meetings so that all members of Parliament are given opportunity to raise issues directly with officials concerned.

Members of Parliament, who attended yesterday’s meetings, gave overwhelming support to Prasad's initiative to revive glory of BSNL and categorically stated that they are eager to extend all support in this context. They were not only concerned about the deteriorating quality of BSNL services but even apprehended private players role in obstructing growth of BSNL which enjoyed lead position in the sector till 2004.

They only suggested that a meeting of representatives from Defence and Home should be called to address this problem.

Prasad also directed the Department of Telecom to explore the possibility of setting up a dedicated cell in BSNL to monitor the effectiveness of its network in border areas and also in areas badly affected by extremism.

The public sector firm, which was established in October 2000, has a net worth of Rs 51,203 crore with an equity capital of Rs 12,500 crore only. New initiatives have been taken to improve viability include Wi-FI services, data centre services and introduction of next generation network switching technology.

About 2,500 hot spots are planned for the year, of which 41 hot-spots have already been deployed.