BSNL takes postal dept's help to verify addresses

Tough times call for tough measures. The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), which is losing a large amount of revenue due to high rate of unpaid bills in its post-paid segment in the state, has tied up with the Department of Posts for verifying addresses and other details of subscribers.

D K Agrawal, principal GM of BSNL told Business Standard, "BSNL has handed over the address verification work of our new post-paid subscribers to the Department of Posts."

This, he hopes, will prevent those who had provided false addresses and documents to get a post-paid connection, from vanishing after calling up a huge bill.

D S Chauhan, director postal services said, "To prevent the revenue loss, BSNL has tied up with Department of Posts for conducting survey of address verification of all BSNL post-paid subscribers and to asserting their exact worthiness."

The Postal department has already begun the survey in first week of March. BSNL has 1.4 lakh post-paid users in the state and currently verification of 45,000 BSNL post-paid subscribers has been completed. Chauhan said that postmen are doing the address verification survey across the state.

"BSNL is learnt to have detected hundreds of false addresses furnished by applicants for securing the post-paid connections. This was revealed during a earlier survey conducted by BSNL officials. BSNL had earlier disconnected services to a few hundred subscribers," an official said.