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BSNL mobile in Thrissur from Friday

By Our Staff Reporter

THRISSUR OCT. 22. The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) mobile service, claimed to be the cheapest mobile service in the world, will be launched in Thrissur on Friday.

Addressing a press conference here today, the principal general manager (PGM) of Thrissur BSNL, K. B. Brahmadathan, said the plan is to give 15,000 connections in the first phase and another 25,000 connections in the second phase. Customers can give the application for the BSNL mobile connection and avail it from Monday.

Initially connections will be mainly in the pre-paid category but the post-paid category will also begin within two weeks.

He said there would be seamless coverage along both the National Highways--from Koratty to Vaniampara on the NH 47 and also starting from Kodungallur till the district boundary on NH 17.

Other main routes being fully covered are Thrissur-Kunnamkulam, Thrissur-Vadakkanchery, Vadakkanchery-Kunnamkulam, Thrissur-Kandassankadavu/Vadanappilli, Thrissur-Cherpu/Irinjalakkuda, Kodakara-Irinjalakkuda, Kodakara-Mala, Chalakkudy-Irinjalakkuda, Chalakkudy-Mala, Perinjanam-Irinjalakkuda and all the major State highways including link roads between NH-47 and NH-17.

In Thrissur district, the BSNL has set up 25 stations in various towns. In the State, 100 towns and cities are fully covered along with incidental coverage in 55 towns. Out of the two MSC switches that have been allocated for the mobiles services in Kerala one has been located in Thrissur and it will cover the North Kerala operations. The other one located in Ernakulam would cover South Kerala operations.

Mr. Brahmadathan said there would be free roaming services in South India even with pre-paid BSNL connections. In the case of post-paid connections there will be all India roaming facilities. He said the speech quality of the BSNL mobile services would also be better compared to other mobile services since the former is using the optical fibre connectivity among all the relay stations whereas the latter use radio links.

Any GSM compatible handset of any make can be used for availing the BSNL mobile service. The BSNL has also entered into arrangements with some dealers for providing its mobile connections. So apart from the service stations of the BSNL, the customers can avail the services from those dealers as well.

The BSNL has set up Cellular Mobile Service Information in regional language in Hyderabad. This high-tech call centre can be accessed in Malayalam by dialing 9447024365. In this 94470 is the Kerala code and 24365 has been incorporated to indicate that customers can contact it for 24 hours on 365 days.

Instant Internet

The PGM said the BSNL would start giving Sancharnet Internet connections right across the counter from its SSA customer care centre located at the Kochi Devaswom Board Building in the city from Wednesday.

According to him the services of the Sancharnet Internet connections have improved significantly because of the new technological infrastructure that has been added to it. Now about 6,400 persons can access the Sancharnet Internet simultaneously.

The BSNL will introduce the CENTREX facility that will enable the subscribers having more than one telephone connections to link all the lines, in Thrissur from November 1.

The customers can introduce an internal numbering scheme of two to four digits, and can dial from one phone to another at a very low rate. Only condition here is that all the phones of the subscriber should belong to the same New Technology Main Exchange.

The tariff for linking two phone with the CENTREX facility is Rs. 50 per month and four a group of four phones the fees is Rs. 100 per month.

This means that a company which has three of four phones at its various offices in different locations can make infinite number of calls from one office to another just by Rs. 100 per month.

To questions, the PGM said efforts were on to print the telephone directory using the BSNL facilities itself, and by winding up the deals with the private agencies. However, he conceded that he would not be able to give a specific date as to when the directory printing which was remaining pending for the last couple of years, would be completed, because of the court cases in this regard.

The BSNL general manager, Thomas Philip, the deputy general managers, K. Francis Jacob, K. Ramadas, M. Gopalakrishnan, and J. J. Sarma, the area manager, A .S. Sukumaran, and the assistant general manager, Vasantha Krishnan, were among those who were present at the press conference.

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