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BSNL poised for major expansion in mobile telephony service in southern region

N. Ravi Kumar

40 lakh new mobile connections for South; 4.5 lakhs for Chennai By year-end, BSNL mobiles will overtake the number of landlines in Chennai

CHENNAI: The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited is set to roll out a major expansion plan in mid-August under which the capacity of its mobile telephone service in southern region will be enhanced to provide nearly 40 lakh new connections, including 12.5 lakh in the State.

New connections

While Chennai Telephones will get 4.5 lakh new mobile connections, 8 lakh new lines are to be added in the Tamil Nadu telecom circle, said K.B. Brahmadathan, Chief General Manager, Chennai Telephones, here on Saturday.

Addressing the first circle (Chennai Telephones) conference of Sanchar Nigam Executives' Association, he said Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology Dayanidhi Maran would participate in a function to mark the launch of the expansion programme on August 17.

The expansion would lead to addition of 8 lakh new mobile lines each in Kerala and Andhra Pradesh too. Chennai Telephones, which had a mobile phone subscriber base of four lakhs and a capacity of 4.3 lakh, would be in a position to offer two lakh new connections under the expansion by September.

By October, it would offer the remaining 2.5 lakh new connections, Mr. Brahmadathan told The Hindu on the sidelines of the conference.

According to him, by this year-end, the mobile subscriber base of Chennai Telephones would possibly overtake that of the landlines, which was around 9.5 lakhs. Appreciating the initiatives being taken by the Executives' Association, he said it provided useful suggestions for improving the customer service and the BSNL. "They give positive suggestions for improvement ... wherever possible we accept them," he said.

The circle secretary, M. Munuswamy, said a seminar was organised earlier in the day on BSNL's mobile and broadband services, on the external plant and customer care.

Some of the suggestions made by the association include creation of more facilities to facilitate bill payments by the subscribers and a single window to address the needs of the landline subscribers. It also wanted improvement in the mobile signals.

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