Govt denies ombudsman for telecom sector

The government today ruled out appointing an ombudsman to redress the complaints of poor mobile telephony services, like call drops, saying state-run BSNL and MTNL were taking effective steps to upgrade technology.

Replying to supplementaries during Question Hour in Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Telecom Sachin Pilot said, while the telecom revolution had led India to having one of the world’s cheapest call rates, it had also led to congestion in network, causing call drops.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) are taking effective steps like upgrading technology and putting in more efforts to improve quality.

“The direct answer to his question is no,” he said when asked whether the government would set up an independent ombudsman to address complaints like call drops.

Telcom Minister A Raja said the per-second metering of call, recently introduced by major mobile operators, was to ensure consumers were not made to pay for full one minute when the call might not have lasted more than a few seconds because of call drop.

He said he was “not bothered” about companies losing revenue in the per-second billing so long as consumers were benefited.

The government was providing a level playing field to public and private telecom operators, he added.

Pilot said teledensity or number of telephones per 100 persons, had increased from 9 per cent in 2005 to 44 per cent now. In metro cities like Delhi and Mumbai, it is more than 100 per cent, but is just 16-18 per cent in rural areas.

BSNL will set up 10,000 towers by March 2010 and 15,000 towers by March 2011 to improve mobile telephony.

The Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund — a corpus created from 5 per cent revenue that companies earned from providing mobile telephony in cities — will be used to increase rural teledensity and provide wireless broadband connections in villages.

On the issue of profitability of BSNL as compared to private companies, he said the state-run firm was saddled with 300,000 employees and one-third of its revenue went towards meeting staff cost. In comparison, the largest private telecom company might have 20,000 employees, consuming 5-8 per cent of the total revenue.

BSNL, he said, had a market share of 77 per cent in landline telephones, 60 per cent in broadband connections and 13.3 per cent in mobile telephones. The decline in the market share had been arrested during the past 12 months and the company was increasing marketing activity.