HIMACHAL NEWS: BSNL to once again become leading phone company in India: CMD

Dharamsala, July 1, 2013: Chairman-cum-MD of BSNL, R K Upadhyay is confident that  BSNL will once again become the leading phone company in India.

Talking to Media at Dharamsala on Monday CMD said, “We lacked behind the other private companies, as we could not purchase  the required equipments in last 4-5 years due to many reasons. Now everything is okay and tenders to purchase has been floated. BSNL has planned a Rs 40,000 crore capital for the purpose.”

He said, “Nigam is emphasising on present telephone exchanges to New Generation network NGN, to give all mobile facilities to our land line subscribers.” He said, “ Twentynine thousand such exchanges shall be converted to NGN. 28000 of them are in the rural sector.’

Upadhyay said that BSNL iis supending 52 % of its capital in employees salaries as compared to other competitive companies who are just spending 5-6 %.He said, “We are waiting for Govt. of India’s approval of VRS for our employees. He indicated that the average age of our employees is 50 years.

Upadhyay said, “ The remote areas of Himachal shall be connected through Micro wave so that fbre cable disconnectivity in bad conditions could be avoided.”

“70 telephone exchanges were affected in Uttarakhand tragedy, only 7 are to be restored now and all the 400 towers are now working there,” added CMD. He said that BSNL could respond to 4,000calls to give last location of lost persons through their cell phones record, to their near ones in last 7 days.

In the morning R K Upadhyay, alongwith other officials of Himachal visited Tibetan religious leader Dalai Lama in McLeodganj.