Faced with heavy financial losses and stiff competition from private players, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) are taking rapid steps to improve their standing, say news reports.
Milind Deora, Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology, has reportedly informed the Lok Sabha that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is also helping the incumbents stand on their feet. To this end, it reportedly periodically examines the companies? performance very closely.
Also, Deora has said that a committee has been established by DoT to identify and encourage operational synergies between the two operators. The panel has reportedly recommended that DoT ought to encourage the creation and recognition of a synergistic alliance of BSNL and MTNL through appropriate policy interventions and support the optimum utilisation of their resources.
Besides, Deora said that both companies are pulling out all stops internally as well.
For example, both are looking at optimising capex and opex via convergence and consolidating their infrastructure. Also, strengthening stable revenue streams through a focus on broadband and enterprise business is another measure.
Both companies are focused on monitoring the revenues obtained from the country?s top 100 cities and are focusing on customer care, service delivery, service assurance, revenue management and asset management.
Aggressively promoting data usage and value added services is also on the agenda, as is segregating commercial and social activities, migrating the current network to a next generation one and consolidating and delivering various services to end customers across different technologies.
