Things have not been rosy for Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) in the region in recent years, going by the spike in customer complaints and cases of consumers surrendering their land phones. Several potential customers opted for connections from other private players after the interminable wait for connections.
Customer complaints“I applied for a BSNL broadband connection last year as I was not very keen on connections from private companies. At first, they said they will give the connection but they kept postponing it. Sometimes, the reason was that there were not enough workers to inspect the site. Then they said they do not have the cable pair to give me connection as all available pairs in the area have been exhausted. Fed up, I opted for a private connection after a month,” says G. Rahul, a resident of Pattom.
For some others, the very slow response to their complaints is reason enough to cancel the connection.
Long wait“After registering complaints regarding landline or broadband, the wait for the technician to arrive sometimes stretches to weeks. Such response will only drive away customers,” says Gireesh.
RestrictionsP.G. Nirmal, General Manager of the landline division, said restrictions on tar cutting was one of the challenges in giving new connections.
“The Public Works Department has imposed a few restrictions on tar cutting. In some areas, if connections are full, it is hard to give new connection. They can go in for other technologies like WiMax in that case,” he said.
The mobile division has also been facing a slew of complaints from customers. In many areas, calls get dropped in the middle of a conversation. In some others, mobile signal goes off as soon as the power supply is off in the area.
Union's take“There has been a concerted effort from the top level to make the customers dissatisfied with BSNL services. How can anyone explain mobile towers not having any power backup? There are also talks of tower-sharing arrangements with private companies, thus reducing the efficiency of our own services. Due to this, we have been steadily losing customers,” says C. Vamadevan, district secretary of the BSNL Casual Labourers’ Union. It is clearly an attempt to help big private players. We are even ready to work without a month’s salary if BSNL could be saved from the downslide by that,” he adds.
