A MONTH after it launched its DataOne broadband service, the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has been able to net only 20 subscribers.
Confirming the poor show, Chief General Manager (CGM), UP East, V K Shukla, said: ‘‘Yes, it has not been very popular so far.’’ But that has not stopped BSNL from being upbeat about achieving its target of 35,000 subscribers in the city by next year.
However, no specific marketing strategy has been chalked out to achieve this uphill task.
The general manager, marketing (UP), A K Tandon, said: ‘‘As such we do not have any specific marketing strategy for local subscribers to sell our broadband service. There are advertisements issued by the central office of BSNL.’’
Undaunted by the challenge posed by some private telecom operators with aggressive marketing strategies, the BSNL also plans to extend the service to five other districts in about two months’ time. These districts include Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi, Jhansi and Gorakhpur, who are to provide a total of 62,000 subscribers together with Lucknow in this current fiscal year.
Banking on its low price, Shukla claimed, ‘‘Our broadband service is the cheapest all over India as compared to any other private telecom company.’’ The BSNL authorities further claimed that they are the only telecom company providing the real broadband as per the international standards, with the mandatory net speed of 256 kbps (kilo byte per second).
Interestingly, the BSNL is losing out on its basic phone subscribers also. Official records revealed that BSNL distributed 90,000 basic telephone lines in the year 2004-05 and 85,000 basic telephone lines were surrendered during the same period, leaving it with a profit of mere 5,000 telephone connections.
CGM UP East Circle VK Shukla, however, ascribed the loss to the increasing disinterest towards basic telephone lines. He pointed out that the department had met its revenue target of Rs 1,414 crore in the last financial year.