BSNL will set up about 300 4G towers in Chennai by March 2017 to enable the public sector enterprise to provide 4G mobile services, a top official of Chennai Telephones, a part of BSNL, said on Monday.
“We will also be entering the 4G space. Tenders will be floated to set up 300 4G towers in Chennai. By March 2017, our 4G towers will, hopefully, be installed and ready for service roll outs,” S.M. Kalavathi, Chief General Manager, Chennai Telephones, said at a press conference on Monday.
Ms. Kalavathi said they had launched 45 4G wi-fi hotspots in Chennai.
The department had identified 40 places in Chennai to expand their broadband network.
“Out of these, we have started work at three places,” she said. About the turnaround time to set right faults in the broadband connections when customers raised issues, the CGM said it took about one to three days for faults to be rectified.
“But nowadays, people are not able to live without internet for even half-an-hour. We are aware of this huge turnaround time. We are working to bring this down to a day or less than a day,” she said.
She said that some staff were asked to work on Sundays to ensure broadband faults were looked into. “There are many married people who are at work all through the week and Sunday is the only day when any complaint can be resolved. We have a few people working on Sundays. We hope to increase the number of people and increase the number of Sundays we work on,” Ms. Kalavathi added.
BSNL added 20 lakh mobile connections a month in the past three months, she said. “It has 11 to 12 per cent market share in the Chennai region,” she said.
Ms. Kalavathi said Indian Bank had adopted two villages in Minjur and Athur under their Corporate Social Responsibility programme, to provide digital access.
BSNL was providing the wi-fi hotspots in these villages, she said and added that more such villages were considered to be adopted by other corporates for the programme.
