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BSNL Kerala circle to provide 2 lakh mobile connections

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Union Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology Shakeel Ahmad on Wednesday said that the BSNL Kerala Circle would give two lakh mobile connections in the current financial year.

The Minister told The Hindu here that this would ease the vast mismatch between demand for BSNL mobile connections in the State and the capacity of the organisation to give connections.

The BSNL had already given 21.2 lakh mobile connections in the State, of which nearly 1.5 lakh were given this year. But the organisation was unable to meet the growing demands for fresh connections because of the shortage of capacity in the network. There were fears that the BSNL would not be able to meet the target of two lakh mobile connections this year in the State.

The BSNL Kerala Circle was waiting for sanction from the headquarters for giving new connections for the last couple of months.

The Minister said the sanction to this effect was given at a review meeting chaired by him here on Tuesday, and the remaining 50,000 connections targeted for this year would be rolled out in the next two months by regulating traffic on the existing network. Dr. Ahmad, who is also in charge of the Postal Department, said the department would make two ships available very soon to carry postal and other articles to 11 islands in Lakshadweep from the State. The ships would be operated from Kochi or some other ports in Kerala. The department had launched a flight service for carrying postal articles to the North-Eastern States.

The Minister said the project for making flight tickets available through the post offices would be expanded to different regions very soon. The project had already been launched on a trial basis in 500 post offices in Karnataka in collaboration with the private airline Air Deccan.

The department had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the HDFC to provide loans to farmers through post offices against National Savings Certificate and Kisan Vikas Patra, in seven States. Post offices would also be distributing SIM cards and postmen had been authorised to verify the genuineness of the address of the SIM card holders, in their postal delivery area, Dr. Ahmad said. The holders of BSNL landline, WLL and post-paid mobile connections had been provided with an insurance coverage of Rs.50,000 as per a recent decision of the government.

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