The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : BSNL fixes pre-paid card recharge glitch

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 04, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

BSNL fixes pre-paid card recharge glitch

M. Dinesh Varma

Union wants to know why it took two weeks to solve Normalcy has been restored "in both IVRS recharge, usual procedure"

CHENNAI : Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited on Tuesday announced that it had fixed a technical glitch that prevented its pre-paid card customers from recharging their cards, but not before a BSNL staff union staged a protest demanding an explanation on the two-week delay in resolving the crisis.

BSNL Chennai Telephones said in a press note that the problem in recharging the prepaid numbers had been attended to and that customers could recharge their numbers without difficulty.

The breakdown of recharge mechanism has been attributed to the incompatibility between the Nortel-Ericsson and Motorola-Siemens systems used by BSNL. Unusually high volumes of recharge codes from Nortel phones on Motorola coupons and vice versa completely clogged and brought down the server in Hyderabad.

The BSNL press note, while regretting the inconvenience to its customers, said `total normalcy is restored both in the case of IVRS recharge as well as the usual procedure'.

Meanwhile, the BSNL Employees' Union organised a dharna in front of the office of the Chennai Telephones chief general manager demanding an explanation on why it took nearly two weeks to fix the technical hitch, at the risk of an exodus of subscribers to competing private cellular operators.

The Union's circle secretary R. Gunasekaran alleged that the BSNL's foot-dragging was a serious issue, especially given the high volumes of pre-paid subscribers who were affected across telecom circles in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.

Mr. Gunasekaran said there were reports of frustrated subscribers switching to other service providers though the consolidated figures of any drop in clientele would become known only later.

The Union accused the BSNL of shirking its responsibility to keep the public informed throughout the crisis and also of a lack of transparency in its engagements with Nortel and Motorola. It was also clear each time the union raised the pre-paid card issue before the management that the BSNL management lacked a clear time frame for resolving the crisis, union leaders said.

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