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"CellOne subscribers for all connections on the post-paid (under Plan 325) and pre-paid connections need no longer pay airtime charges on incoming calls"

The Chairman & Managing Director of BSNL, Mr Prithipal Singh, with Mr Kranti Kumar, Director, Planning, addressing a press conference in the Capital on Thursday.

NEW DELHI, Feb. 20

GIVING tough competition to the private cellular operators, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has already bagged 14.4 lakh subscribers for its mobile services - CellOne, and hopes to increase this to 45 lakh by the end of next fiscal.

Disclosing this at a press conference today, the BSNL Chairman and Managing Director, Mr Prithipal Singh, noted that all its existing subscribers in 944 cities subscribers across the country could avail themselves of free incoming calls round-the clock, starting Friday. Customers will continue to enjoy extra benefits such as free roaming through India, free caller line identification, itemised billing and a host of other features, he noted.

"CellOne subscribers for all connections on the post-paid (under Plan 325) and pre-paid connections need no longer pay airtime charges on incoming calls. They will also not be charged any extra cost for this facility. What is more, the coverage will soon be expanded to 172 more cities during the year", he said.

Mr Singh also noted that the company is considering slashing the STD call rates for its landline customers. While the exact details of the rate-cut are yet to be worked out, the new proposals will be submitted to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for approval before making them public. As regards the new tariff structure for fixed lines that are to be implemented starting April, as per the TRAI regulations, he noted that BSNL would be coming out with alternative packages so that the customer does not feel the pinch.

The BSNL Chairman pointed that large-scale surrender of landline phones (over 15 lakhs last year) has nothing do with the customer services and there were other reasons behind this trend.

"There are a host of factors responsible for the surrender of phones. It is more to do with the economics of the family rather than the customer services of BSNL", he said.

He added that the landline customers could look forward to a host of new services that will be introduced shortly. BSNL will also soon be launching its "always on" internet services for its wire line customers across the country, new value-added services, CLI-based Internet services, broadband services and high speed virtual private network (VPN) for the corporates.

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