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BSNL officers flay NTP proposals

Staff Reporter

`Sops' for private telephone operators in NTP

MALAPPURAM: Officers of the telecom major Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) have expressed angst at various proposals mooted in the new National Telecom Policy (NTP), which is likely to be announced soon. Terming the Central Government move as a step to help private telephone operators at the expense of public money, BSNL officers and other employees have chalked out a nation-wide agitation on Thursday.

The 3.95 lakh employees of BSNL under the banner of various associations and unions will go on a token strike on Thursday. But phone services are unlikely to be affected. K.D. Sebastian, zonal president of the Sanchar Nigam Executives Association, said here on Sunday that it would not be a strike to inconvenience the public.

What fidgets the officers is the proposal for sharing of BSNL's rural infrastructure by private operators. They pointed out that the private operators had refused to provide their services in the rural sector despite their 10 per cent obligation stipulated in the National Telecom Policy of 1999, for reasons of lack of profit.

The burden of catering to the rural sector was borne by BSNL alone, they said. Telephone connections in the rural sector, they said, are highly subsidised. It costs about Rs.25,000 to install a telephone connection in the rural sector.

Despite its late entry into the mobile phone sector, BSNL managed to set up a wide network in urban and rural areas. When BSNL launched its mobile, three other private operators had already been on the scene with more than five years of experience. Yet, they did not set up infrastructure in the rural sector.

While BSNL spread its network to the rural areas, private operators such as Idea, BPL and Airtel concentrated largely on urban areas. BSNL officers said that it would be unjust to allow private operators to share BSNL's rural infrastructure without meeting their rural obligation. Mr. Sebastian warned that unbundling of local loop or allowing private operators to use BSNL or MTNL cables as mooted in the yet-to-be-announced NTP would create a lot of problems. He said this experiment had been a failure abroad.

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