Southern States - Tamil Nadu-Chennai   

50,000 landlines surrendered in current financial year

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI DEC. 10. Around 50,000 landlines of Chennai Telephones have been surrendered in the current financial year, while only 30,000 new connections have been obtained.

Stating this to presspersons, the Chief General Manager, K. B. Brahmadathan, said his organisation was looking at various options to reduce tariff structure for landline subscribers. However, a final picture would emerge after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India announced a fresh set of inter-connect usage charges (IUC) for service providers.

He was responding to queries from presspersons after launching the operations of Chennai Telephones' call centre.

Located at its Mambalam exchange on Anna Salai, the call centre, described as "the biggest in the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) network" was established at a cost of Rs.4 crores and implemented on a turn key basis by Tata Consultancy Services.

Fitted with "state-of-the-art equipment," it would provide information on tariff and the basic and wireless in local loop telephony products of Chennai Telephones. It would serve as a follow-up point for prospective subscribers to check the status of their applications for new connections, shift and complaints pertaining to fault and billing. Subscribers accessing the facility had the option of interacting either in Tamil or English.

The round-the-clock facility, which could be accessed by calling 1500, would be manned at any time by 45 operators and five supervisors, and would serve as a single window solution for products and services of Chennai Telephones. The facility, for which around 120 people had been trained, would handle the directory enquiry (197 service) for 12-hours from 8 p.m. In future, the centre would also handle queries pertaining to the cellular service of Chennai Telephones and services of the BSNL's Tamil Nadu Telecom Circle, Mr Brahmadathan said, adding that Chennai Telephones would soon launch a post-paid cellular scheme with a rental of Rs.140 per month. Initially, it would be offered to dyslexia patients and doctors treating the diseases and after a fortnight, the scheme would be open to other subscribers.

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