In a statement to the Lok Sabha, Milind Deora, Minister of State, Communications and Information Technology, has said that subscribers of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) are not switching over to private players, say news reports.
According to him, this is owing to inadequate network coverage and poor quality of services in various states. Deora adds that until June 2012, only 0.6 per cent of BSNL and 1.79 per cent of MTNL?s mobile subscribers switched over to other operators.
While he did mention that both incumbents were facing certain issues related to quality of service (QoS), Deora said that by and large, both operators were managing to adhere to the QoS benchmarks defined by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
This, he added, was concluded via an operator assisted test of BSNL?s network in select cities and MTNL?s in Delhi and Mumbai. This test was conducted by an independent agency identified by TRAI to audit and assess QoS during the quarter ending March 2012.
And as per the reports, though service coverage in most of these places was not 100 per cent, both operators? performance was comparable to the service coverage provided by other companies.
