The Communications and IT Minister A Raja has asked BSNL to focus on the growth of cellular and broadband services due to its declining market share.

Raja was speaking at the 15th Heads of Circles Conference of BSNL in New Delhi. The minister asked BSNL officials to develop a plan to reinstate BSNL’s market position. Raja expressed confidence that BSNL would continue to contribute more than 50% to reach a national target of 20 million broadband connections by 2010.

Raja told BSNL to focus on quality of service, customer care and responsiveness to the needs of customers to overcome competition from the future launch of number portability. He asked BSNL to strengthen the customer services system. Raja also stressed the need to upgrade the skills of the technical and managerial staff and providing adequately training.

The Minister appealed for more intelligent financial management for better profit margins, reducing the costs, using capital assets efficiently, increasing revenue through sharing of infrastructure and reduction of outstanding dues. He advised the BSNL management to improve the value added services (VAS) to meet customers’ needs and increase revenue. He urged BSNL to ensure immediate rollout of 3G and WI-MAX services based on the spectrum already allocated to it by the government.

The minister pointed to the gap between the all India teledensity of 30% and the rural teledensity of 11%, and stressed the need for BSNL to bridge this digital divide.  He asked BSNL managers to devise newer methods to reach such areas not only in terms of access network but also through good distribution network. 

The conference was attended by Siddhartha Behura, secretary, department of telecom, Kuldeep Goyal, CMD, BSNL, members of the BSNL board, chief general managers from BSNL circles and DoT and BSNL officials. X

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