challenge BY BSNL

sunandaC

Sunanda K. Chavan
Challenges

During Financial Year 2006-2007 (From April 01, 2006 to March 31, 2007) BSNL has added 9.6 million new customers in various telephone services taking its customer base to 64.8 million. BSNL's nearest competitor Bharti Airtel is standing at a customer base of 39 million. However, despite impressive growth shown by BSNL in recent times, the fixed line customer base of BSNL is declining.


In order to woo back its fixed-line customers BSNL has brought down long distance calling rate under OneIndia plan, however, the success of the scheme is not known. However, BSNL faces bleak fiscal 2006-2007 as users flee, which has been accepted by the CMD BSNL.

Presently there is an intense competition in Indian Telecom sector and various Telco’s are rolling out attractive schemes and are providing good customer services. However, BSNL being legacy operator and its conversion from a Government Department earns lot of criticism for its poor customer service. Although in recent past there have been tremendous improvement in working of BSNL but still it is much below the Industry's Expectations.


A large aging (average age 49 years (appx) workforce (300,000 strong), which is mostly semi-illiterate or illiterate is the main reason for the poor customer service.. Although in coming years the retirement profile of the workforce is very fast and around 25% of existing workforce will retire by 2010, however, still the workforce will be quite large by the industry standards. Quality of the workforce will also remain an issue.
 
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