BSNL offers step-motherly
treatment to Goa
Sandesh Prabhudesai
22 August 2007
The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited has been meeting out step-motherly
treatment to Goa, the state having the largest telephone density
in the country.
According to sources, the BSNL has decided to shut down the
call centre set up in Panaji despite Goa having over three
lakh subscriber base in the 13-lakh strong state.
The local BSNL staff is also enraged over shifting each and
every set up meant for Goa to Kolhapur in Maharashtra, without
providing any convincing justification.
Being a tiny state with an area of hardly 3702 sq kms, Goa
has been included in the Maharashtra circle by the BSNL, with
its headquarters at Mumbai.
However, the tourist state has around two lakh landline subscribers,
around 76,000 mobile users as well as around 5000 WLL Tarang
subscribers, besides around 24 lakh tourists visiting the
state annually.
In order to facilitate such a high subscriber base, the local
BSNL office had outsourced a call centre at its Patto office
in Panaji, providing sigh of relief to the subscribers, who
could seldom get connected at its Pune call centre in spite
of repeated attempts.
According to sources, in order to reduce the congestion at
the Pune headquarters, the BSNL had decided to set up a separate
main switching centre (MSC) in Goa. However, without providing
any proper justification, it was shifted to Kolhapur last
year.
Similarly, the switching centre of the Wireless Local Loop
service called Tarang, initially meant for Goa, was also shifted
to Kolhapur this year.
The local BSNL office is also enraged over the setting up
of the second connecting point of the Multiplay service to
Kolhapur once again. According to the sources, the high speed
broadband connectivity service, which also provides Internet
Protocol TV (IPTV) with around 100 TV channels and movie on
demand, would pick up very fast in the whole state of Goa,
compared to the small city of Kolhapur.
Though in Maharashtra circle, sources here feel that Goa
should be given a proper recognition, being a separate state
as well as having regards for its high subscription base and
future potential.
The sub-standard attitude of BSNL authorities towards Goa
also reflects with no recognition being given to its official
language Konkani, spoken by 95 per cent people of the state,
neither in its computerised announcements nor at the call
centres. These services are made available only in English
and Hindi as well as Marathi, the official language of Maharashtra.
The local BSNL officials are also upset because its Kolhapur
office does not attend to the problems that occur in the Goan
network, resulting into the collapse of service for days together.
They are also upset that the local MPs do not take enough
interest in arguing the case of Goa at the Delhi headquarters,
due to which the cake meant for Goa is being stolen away by
Kolhapur.
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