NEW DELHI: BSNL will no longer offer stand-alone landlines. The PSU has decided to offer a bundled broadband connection with every new landline that it installs across the country. Customers will not be charged extra for these broadband activated landlines.
The users can activate the high-speed internet connection at any time, a senior executive with the company told ET. The move is in line with BSNL’s plans to increase its broadband users base. “This will be extended to the landlines being installed even in rural areas – 99.9% of all new landlines will come with this facility,” the executive added.
In the next round, the PSU will make all its existing landline connections internet enabled. “The process is expected to be completed by the month-end, after which any landline subscriber of BSNL can log on to the internet without taking a Sancharnet connection and thereby avoiding the hassle of registration or taking a separate subscription package for the internet. However, the speeds here will be that of dial-up connection – at 56 Mbps – and not at 256 Mbps as provided through a broadband connection, the BSNL executive said.
This comes even as the PSU has deactivated about 0.4 million of its internet connections during the last couple of months for failing to use the Net.
The company had to resort to this move due to lack of usage to save resources. “We did not have server and storage space to accommodate these customers,” a company executive said. This had also resulted in BSNL witnessing a 2.93% decline in its subscriber base to 2.42 million during the April–June quarter as per the latest performance indicator report by telecom regulator Trai.
BSNL also feels broadband-enabled fixedline connections will help revive the falling subscriber base in the wireline segment. Trai’s latest report states that the PSUs’ wireline base is decreasing and after a 2.46% decline in the April–June quarter, BSNL had 33.58 million wireline subscribers as of April-end, 2007. BSNL is also set to launch IPTV services in all major cities and is confident that its broadband base will witness a significant increase on offering this service.
