Public sector telecom service providers aim to boost market share

The  number of telephone connections provided by public sector companies has increased to 76.46 million as on 31 January 2008 from 61.07 million in 2006, with their market share having declined steadily during the last few years due to the increased competition.

Over the years state run Bharat Sanchar Nigam and Mahanagar Telecom Nigam Ltd have lost customers to private sector rivals due to growing pressure on their infrastructure that has not been able to keep pace with the growing subscriber base.

According to minister of state for communications and information technology,  Dr Shakeel Ahmad, the two public sector units have taken a number of steps to expand their
market share. These include:

Expansion of cellular mobile network and wireless in local loop (WLL) network to overcome the network congestion and take care of growing demand. 
Deployment of mobile network along all the highways to give incidental coverage to large parts of rural areas

Boost telecom services in rural areas through the following universal service obligation fund (USOF) schemes:
 > Provision of village public telephones (VPTs) in 66,822 uncovered villages
 > Setting up of 7,871 shareable infrastructure sites in phase-I and plan for 11,049  sites in phase-II
 > Subsidy support for rural direct exchange lines (RDELs)

Expansion of broadband network in all the major cities and induction of broadband in about 1000 rural blocks Usage of dual technology spectrum

Providing a number of value added services for both mobile and land line subscribers such as news, songs, astrology, e-ticketing, short message service (SMS), voice SMS, internet, Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) etc. in line with emerging trends.

BSNL/MTNL are regularly reviewing their tariff and introducing new plans for various products and services so as to make them competitive and customer oriented.