Ramashray Prasad, who recently took charge as General Manager (GM) Jharkhand Telecom Circle, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has plans to make BSNL reach out to maximum number of people in the State. BSNL during lockdown launched its FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) broadband scheme, in an attempt to take on the "latest telecom players". Prasad, who hails from Nalanda district in Bihar is BE (Electronics and Communication), MBA and Master in Science. Prasad in a talk with The Pioneer shared his vision for the Telecommunication Company.
At the time (during lockdown) when coronavirus is making the Internet stronger with data consumption going high, what are BSNL’s plans?
The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) in June this year when there was lockdown launched its FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) broadband scheme. The FTTH aims at providing better internet connection to its customers at an affordable rate. Under the FTTH, the customers will get 300 GB with 50 MBPS speed at Rs 749.
Also the housing complexes are getting 5GB/day data and unlimited voice calls at Rs 199. For the rest, the tariff is Rs 299 per month, offering 300 GB of data and 600 GB from Rs 491 per month.
There is a good response for FTTH as every month we are adding 150 to 200 new customers. Our motto is customer satisfaction at an affordable rate.
What is BSNL’s plan for meeting customer satisfaction, which is high speed Internet connection and better voice call? Tell us something about Airfibre services.
BSNL has recently launched Airfibre services and this facility will be launched in Jharkhand soon. BSNL Bharat Airfibre will enable homes in rural areas with broadband services which is different from company’s Bharat Fiber FTTH services. BSNL Bharat Fiber offers high-speed broadband from 256 Kbps to 100 Mbps. Meanwhile, Bharat AirFibre is completely wireless and offers broadband up to 10Mbps up to a distance of 5 Kms. In Jharkhand circle we will launch this service soon so that customers are benefitted. On a trial basis we have started the operations in a few VIPs areas and the response is very good.
What is your plan for providing better Internet connection especially high speed Internet connection to customers?
Data users are increasing day-by-day. In Eastern region the Internet user is 1 TB of data growth on a daily basis. While in Jharkhand the Internet user demand is 1000 GB. There are three gateways Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore. But from Kolkata gateway the Internet speed slows down. We have initiated several steps for augmenting the speed such as increasing PGCIL fibre bandwidth. On a local level we are facing interruption in our services especially cable service due to our cable wires getting damaged by other agencies work. Due to Jharkhand Bijli Vitran Nigam Limited (JVNL) work many times our underground cable wires get damaged. We have requested JVNL to look on this front.
What is the reason behind BSNL shoddy services? And what are the ways of complaint redressal?
As I told you BSNL have launched various schemes and offers for internet speed and connection. BSNL has recently launched Airfibre services and this facility will be launched in Jharkhand soon. During lockdown BSNL launched its FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) broadband scheme.
The FTTH aims at providing better internet connection to its customers at an affordable rate. As compared to private telecom providers as BSNL is state owned telecom services there are some difficulties in 4G services mainly due to the tendering process but all this issue will be addressed soon. For complaint redressal we have three layers for customer satisfaction which is a call centre through which any customer can make his complaint. Customers can also access offices where officers can look into the complaint of customers. Also there is appellate authority for complaint redressal.
