Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has told Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) to improve services and ensure better quality of signal specially in the border and extremism affected areas.

The Minister said this at a meeting on Tuesday with the members of Parliament (MPs) from Bihar, Meghalaya, Manipur and Nagaland.

This meeting is 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, the Telecom Ministry said in a statement.

“While 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 management of BSNL will also be expected to regain lost confidence of people by improving services and response,” Prasad said.

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.

MPs from Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and North-Eastern States participated in the first meeting and Prasad has directed the Department (Telecom) to call five such meetings so that all MPs are given opportunity to raise issues directly with officials concerned.

The Telecom Minister also directed the DoT 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 MPs were also informed that the public sector which came into being only in October 2000 has a net worth of ₹51,203 crore with an equity capital of ₹12,500 crore only.

It was pointed out that four million lines in phase -I will have next-generation network by the end of this fiscal while total number of 14 million ports are planned and 2500 hot spots are planned for the year of which 41 hot-spot have already been deployed.

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