The Hindu : Poor infrastructure hits WLL-M phone service

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 12, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Poor infrastructure hits WLL-M phone service

By N. Ravi Kumar

CHENNAI, MARCH 11. From being a poor man's mobile to becoming an impoverished service. This is how many subscribers of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited in the city describe their WLL-M (wireless in local loop-mobile) phones.

Inadequate signals, disturbance and lack of clarity are some of the common complaints voiced by the 26,000 subscribers of the service, which Chennai Telephones launched two years ago. BSNL sources say at least 2,000 WLL-M connections have been surrendered in the last few months.

Once hailed as a poor man's mobile, the popularity of the service took a beating when the cost of using GSM cellular phones, the technology employed by Airtel and Aircel, started declining.

Chennai Telephones also deployed WLL technology — it works on the Code Division Multiple Access principle — as a last mile solution for providing landline connections in suburbs where it is not technically feasible to extend wired lines.

The initial enthusiasm to market the phones has not been matched by infrastructure and the subscribers suffer, complains T. Sadagopan, a consumer activist. Nearly 400 subscribers at and around Pattabiram (to the west of Chennai) are waiting for over a year to have a base tower station.

``At least if the proposed telephone exchange is commissioned, many of the households can get wire lines,'' says Mr. Sadagopan, who is the general secretary of the Tiruvalluvar District Consumer Information Centre.

But official apathy to their plight is what appears to agitate the subscribers. To substantiate this, they point to the strides made by two private companies in the segment that use the same technology.

Reliance and Tata Teleservices have not only built a huge subscriber base for their CDMA phones, but also offer roaming facility — possible only with a network of signal repeating stations. Reliance says it has 160 towers; Tata Teleservices has over 100 towers.

Even top officials of Chennai Telephones are candid about the inadequacies of the service. Admitting that the coverage is not evenly spread, and ``very bad'' in some localities, a senior official attributed it to the few WLL base towers.

Though 36 such towers were planned, only 16 were set up, resulting in problems associated with poor reception even in open spaces — as users at Pattabiram experience.

In the absence of adequate repeaters, the coverage of WLL phones with limited mobility (within Chennai Telephones limit) is affected due to high-rise structures and thick vegetation.

With the expansion of the infrastructure mired in ``contractual problems and uncertainty'' — there is no word from the BSNL headquarters — Chennai Telephones barely markets the Tarang service. Insiders say Chennai Telephones has recovered the total cost of Rs. 15 crores it spent on the project.

Ten days ago, BSNL announced an alternative package — the fifth — for WLL-M users with a monthly rental of Rs. 250 that was similar to the `general' category of its basic landline service. Pointing to this, a senior official said WLL-M phones are still cost-effective and it is too early to sound the last post.

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