BSNL wants fixed wireless services to be on a par with WLL

Alleging widespread misuse of fixed wireless phone services, Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) intends to urge the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to treat all fixed wireless phone services on a par with wireless in local loop (WLL) platform.

For customers, the proposal would mean that they would no longer be able to access fixed wireless services at landline rates, but would have to pay tariffs equivalent to using a mobile phone to avail this service.

As per the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Trai, the terms and conditions of fixed wireless does not permit mobility beyond the subscriber's base station.

BSNL executives, however, allege that operators continued to offer more than the prescribed mobility, and customers were often able to use these phones beyond their base transmission station (BTS).

Executives of state-owned public sector said if operators were unable to 'enforce discipline on the issue or could not lock fixed wireless phones to the customer's BTS on technical grounds, BSNL would seek the regulator's intervention in the issue.

According to BSNL executives, the proposal to treat fixed wireless at par with the WLL platform, was to ensure that the PSU was not denied its share of access deficit charge (ADC) through the misuse of this service.

"Operators can retain the access deficit charges (ADC) only when the fixed wireless services they provide allows no mobility," said a BSNL executive. "Under WLL, there is no ADC on intra-circle calls, while for inter-circle calls, the ADC would be passed on to BSNL," he said.

All operators, which offer fixed wireless services in the country, including both the state-owned players Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) and BSNL, have been pulled up by the DoT for misleading advertisements or misuse of services under this platform.

In January the regulator had directed Reliance Infocomm, Tata Teleservices and MTNL to stop advertising their fixed wireless phone service as 'Walky', 'Unlimited Cordless' and 'Landline bhi Mobile bhi - Jahan Aap Wahan', respectively.

"The interconnect usage charges and ADC regime provides different treatment for calls from mobile and fixed services including wireless fixed," the authority said.

DoT also served a seven-day notice to MTNL on Friday seeking an explanation on the misuse of its fixed wireless service, 'which had resulted in the evasion of statutory payments, including ADC'.

The department also slapped a similar notice on BSNL on Saturday, on the mobile PCO it was offering in the Vishakhapatnam railway station as well as in some trains.

"The notification was misjudged - we found that the operator at the station was the violator and was offering the services as a mobile PCO. As soon as this was brought to our notice, we shifted the PCO under the WLL platform, from fixed wireless," BSNL executives added.