Airtel plans to extend its facilities to the entire stateProspective telephone subscribers in Indore, Madhya Pradesh's commercial hub, have never had it so good.For the past couple of months, public-sector monolith Indore Telephones (IT) has had a "phone-on-demand" service, with promises of new connections within 48 hours in the busy areas of the city. All you have to do is call the department and keep a draft for Rs 3,010 ready. An IT employee visits you the following day, collects the draft and installs the phone. Elsewhere in the city, linemen go around, pagers on their hips, repairing phone lines. The department has started a training programme for its staff, added a host of value added services, is rewiring high-rise buildings and replacing all overhead wires with underground cables. "Earlier we were treating people as subscribers," says R.L. Dube, general manager, IT. "The emphasis is now on treating them as customers."A miraculous attitudinal change? IT is only gearing up to meet competition. On June 4, Indore became the first city in the country to have a private sector-run fixed-line telephone service provided by Airtel. The promoter, Bharti Telenet Ltd, a joint venture of Bharti Enterprises (will be grossed in the first three years per cent equity) and multinational Telecome Italia, has plans to extend the service to the rest of the state, for which it has already laid over 1,200 km of optic fibre cables. The total investment planned is Rs 4,000 crore, of which Rs 800 crore will be grossed in the first three years..preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}Suddenly, therefore, the customer is king in Indore and other major cities of Madhya Pradesh. Long used to dead telephones and complaints that are never attended to, subscribers in Bhopal were surprised last week to find linemen busy checking their internal wiring when no one had actually complained.Admits Dube: "This kind of approach would not have been possible had we remained a monopoly service." Bharti Telenet's Chief Executive Officer Bhagwan D. Khurana says that the ultimate beneficiary is the customer: "Now he has a choice." Businessman Vijay Mirchandani agrees: "The service will improve like it did when aviation was opened to the private sector."Already the fight has begun in right earnest for a share of the market and it promises to be acrimonious. Last week, IT lodged an FIR accusing Airtel of damaging its underground cables. "Airtel is probably in a hurry because of the high stakes involved," says Dube, referring to the fact that the company has to pay Rs 5 lakh per day as licence fee for the Madhya Pradesh circle. The controversy finally culminated last week with the Indore Municipal Corporation banning digging operations by Airtel for laying cables till the end of the monsoon.So far it has been a David versus Goliath fight. Airtel has been able to provide only 540 connections-as against IT's 1.28 lakh lines in the five weeks since it launched its service. And 80 per cent of these connections work on the costly loop technology, in which fixed wireless telephones are connected to their local exchanges without the use of underground cables.Thanks to a dispute with the Customs Department, Airtel has not been able to to provide telephones to about 1,100 subscribers who have already deposited money with it.Thus, while those making 1,000 calls a month have to pay Rs 1.33 per call, there is a 5.5 per cent reduction in the tariff for those who make over 3,000 calls a month. The rebate increases until it touches 20 per cent for over 30,000 calls.A common complaint is that Airtel cares for only high-end users. Indeed, it provides them a rebate in tariff. "The Telecom Department penalises high end users by charging them more," says Bharti Telenet's Vice-President (projects) V.K. Aggarwal. "We reward them."Things are set to change though. IT is also planning to introduce "competitive commercial rates" and Airtel will have to capitalise on its quality of service. Only then can it hope to achieve its target of providing 1.5 lakh lines within three years and 20 lakh lines by 2012 and "herald a new era of telecommunication in India".Published By: AtMigration Published On: Jun 10, 1998--- ENDS ---
