The Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) have criticised the Centre for protecting the interests of private telecom operators at the cost of public telecom operator BSNL.
As part of their state-wide agitation, its members staged Save BSNL selfie protest here on Tuesday.
It district secretary K.R. Balaji said that the selfies will be posted in social media to impress upon the Centre to take efforts for upgrading BSNL service. While private operators have got licence for 4G service and were getting ready for 5G service, the PSU BSNL was yet to be given licence for 4G service.
Recently, the private mobile operators have increased the telecom charges up to ₹ 100 for three-month talk time.
People who had migrated to private operators lured by their 4G facility have come back to BSNL for its cheaper tariff, he said.
The Centre has not allowed BSNL to expand its network based on its subscribe-base and the BSNL subscribers were facing network issues.
“It looks like the Centre is deliberately preventing network expansion of BSNL so that the private mobile operators can benefit,” Mr. Balaji complained. If the private operators are able to increase the telecom charges even in the presence of BSNL, they might increase the tariff manifold in the event of BSNL getting wiped out from the scene.
DYFI wanted the Centre to stop private operators from swindling the subscribers with higher tariff.
