The Hindu : BSNL outbound roaming facility by April

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Feb 12, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

BSNL outbound roaming facility by April

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, FEB. 11. BSNL CellOne subscribers in the Tamil Nadu Circle will be provided with the "outbound roaming" facility by April first week. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited will also introduce a "loyalty scheme" with a host of freebies for its CellOne mobile users.

Unveiling the promotional schemes at a news conference here yesterday, K. Mahadevan, BSNL Chief General Manager, Tamil Nadu Telecom Circle, said the outbound roaming facilities would provide a "seamless mobile telephone link" with 160 countries. "We have already placed orders with Motorola, vendor of BSNL, for providing a special SIM card for implementing this facility." The "outbound roaming facility" would be made available to the existing CellOne customers, besides to new subscribers.

On the international SMS service, Mr.Mahadevan said that while the incoming message would be free, the in-roamers would be charged Rs.20 per outgoing message (maximum of 160 characters). For CellOne customers making international SMS calls, the charges would be Rs.3 per message (maximum of 160 characters) and for pre-paid customers, Rs.5 per message (maximum of 160 characters). In addition, charges for national SMS were reduced to 40 paise from 60 paise per message for maximum of 160 characters.

Elaborating on the loyalty scheme, Mr.Mahadevan said free calls worth Rs.75 and 150 a month would be permitted for customers under Plan-325 and Plan-525 respectively, subject to their having been an existing BSNL CellOne subscribers for six months or more as on February 1, 2004. Customers for whom six months were not over on February 1, free talk value from the first of the month after they completed six months would be offered.

On the progress of the BSNL CellOne mobile service, Mr.Mahadevan said the organisation had saturated its total installed capacity of 3.3 lakh lines encompassing the post and pre-paid connections.

"We have been allotted 2 lakh lines and we have sought an addition of 80,000 lines. This will be in addition to the already existing 3.3 lakh connections". Over 145 towns in the Tamil Nadu circle had been covered. Efforts were on to augment the BSNL Cellone services by introducing high-speed data transmission as the service provider would be made GPRS-enabled.

Negotiations were at an advanced stage with multinational banks having Automatic Teller Machines for facilitating re-charging of BSNL's pre-paid mobile services.

Referring to mobile WLL customers, Mr.Mahadevan said a new tariff plan would be introduced from March 1. The rental charges would be Rs.120, 180 and 250.

The subscribers would be eligible for 50 free calls a month. Call charges would be Re.1 per call unit for the first 300 metered call units (excluding free calls) and Rs. 1. 20 beyond 300 metered call units.

BSNL also decided to extend the promotional tariff for long distance calls to Europe, the United States, Canada, Singapore, HongKong, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

The tariff, valid till January 15, was extended till March 31.

On value-added services, Mr.Mahadevan said that on the lines of the recently-introduced "one Thirukkural a day" pay service in coordination with Dialnet, efforts were made to help the subscribers listen to messages given by Sri Jayendra Saraswathi of the Kanchi Peetam by dialling 044-1250-115.

On the Mahamaham event in Kumbakonam, Mr.Mahadevan said BSNL would be making elaborate arrangements by working closely with the State Government authorities.

"We would be adding more bay stations and also augmenting Wireless in Local Loop services to cope with any situation.

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