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Journalism of Courage
State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and MTNL have decided to hold Reliance Infocomm virtually to ransom by drying up interconnection in time for their commercial launch scheduled for May 1. While MTNL has provided only 175 points of interconnect against 522 requested for in Delhi, in Mumbai it has provided 520 against a total of 634 requested for.
The interconnect provides inter-linkages between different networks making it possible for an MTNL subscriber to talk to a Reliance subscriber and vice versa. Without enough points of interconnection, what the subscriber would hear when he dials out is that the network is busy, not the best way to launch a new service.
Reliance Infocomm is preparing to commercially launch its WLL services in 111 cities to begin with on May 1. But thanks to the tardy progress on the interconnection front with BSNL, only 59 cities are ready for a launch of commercial service. Around 52 SDCAs are such where even testing of services has not begun.
As far as the STD services are concerned, Reliance has not got a single interconnect point by BSNL. All the 111 districts or SDCAs (short distance charging area) in telecom parlance are still waiting to be connected or even be allowed to test for commercial call traffic. Similar is the case for ISD calls for which BSNL/MTNL have not given any connectivity to Reliance.
The company has now asked the Communications Minister Arun Shourie to intervene and address the problem, failing which commercial launch of services would be next to impossible for the company.
Top Reliance officials said that the procedure adopted by BSNL was the main cause for the delay. There were delays in allotment of testing teams for transmission testing and switch testing and clearance for commercial traffic. This procedure, they say, normally could take anything between two to three months which is far too long for time-bound commercial launches.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam officials defended this on the grounds that in the first few months Reliance had offered free calls to their subscribers as a result of which there was heavy traffic congestion on the routes. ‘‘When they really start charging, they will know the real traffic and then be able to reassess their requirements of points of interconnection,’’ said a top Bharat Sanchar Nigam official.
He also stated that the Reliance plan to simultaneously launch at so many places was very ambitious and another reason why they were now facing problems.
Reliance on the other hand will find it commercially difficult to operate services especially STD and ISD if they have to rely on the BSNL network to carry their traffic as they would have to pass on 40 per cent of their revenue to Bharat Sanchar Nigam instead of 5 per cent if they were to carry these calls on their own long distance network.
In any case, the ministry may have to step in to break off the logjam for now.
