BSNL to invest Rs 450cr in Bengal circle

West Bengal telecom circle (WBTC) of BSNL would invest Rs 450 crore in the next financial year to augment its infrastructure. This would help the state run telecom giant offer six lakh GSM and 2.5 lakh CDMA connections respectively in the state.

S K Chakravarty, chief general manager of WBTC, said BSNL would provide umbrella coverage across the state. "There is huge pent up demand in the state. However, due to lack of capacity, we could not address their need," he said.

BSNL plans to roll out Cell One service in 84 new townships of West Bengal and Sikkim in three months. So far, the service is available in 56 towns. The network will also be upgraded to make it GPRS and EDGE compatible.

In order to help the customer pay the telephone bill, BSNL is going to tie up with PSU banks like UCO, Union Bank, United Bank of India (UBI), State Bank of India (SBI) and different gramin banks. "Our endeavor is that a customer should never be more than 15 minutes away from a bill collection centre," he said.

BSNL is also willing to provide an alternate offer to clear the backlog for landline phone. It plans to offer CDMA connections to almost 1.5 lakh applications pending for landline.

It also plans to deploy latest Intelligent Network Services (IN service). This would enable BSNL to provide services like India Calling Card, Free phone, virtual private network (VPN), universal numbering among others.

It will also augment the National Internet Backbone (NIB) to provide increased capacity of low speed and high speed internet access.

To meet the demand arising out of the General Election 2004, WBTC has made special provisions to offer Cell One connections. Chakravarty said 3,000 connection capacity has been kept for administrative staff, political parties, candidates among others.

The CGM informed BSNL would bank upon the Grameen Model to provide last mile connectivity to users. Under the scheme, a NGO called Grameen Sanchar Society (GRASSO) is acting as a franchisee for BSNL. This NGO has deployed close to 1,500 people who virtually go to the doorstep of consumers in rural pockets carrying CDMA phone.

So far there was no instances of default and the model has turned out to be more remunerative than village telephone as cost of maintenance the connection is much less.