The quality of the BSNL service is deteriorating with the time in Goa, they are highly unprepared to provide quality broadband and fixed landline service due to shortage of equipment according to the news published by TNN on 6th May 2015 in one of the news online portal. Continuous network outage is a major feature of their broadband services these days. “We have no equipment, our instruments are old, cables are old and we have to keep calling Mumbai and Delhi for everything,” a local BSNL official in charge of new connections said.
The recent network outage in many parts of North Goa, specially the populated coastal belt of Calangute and Candolim, has put the (BSNL) Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited’s shoddy services back into spotlight, so much so that the issue reached to the Lok-Sabha. BJP and Lok Sabha member Sanjay Dhotre came down heavily on BSNL for “poor” services across the country going to the extent of asking whether some BSNL employees were working for private operators.
Apparently the company has also hit a wall when it comes to setting up and installing new towers in the s state. “BSNL is never given permission to lay new towers but private companies seem to be getting permission,” a senior BSNL official said. “It is almost as if the government doesn’t want BSNL to work.”
BSNL officials have also assumed that there appeared to be intentional efforts to jeopardize BSNL operations in Goa. The cutting of the fiber optic cables which had caused the outage in north Goa harming domestic and commercial consumers along the Candolim-Baga belt, Bambolim, Porvorim and Mapusa. According to the TNN report the broadband services and phone lines were down along the Candolim-Baga belt, Bambolim, Porvorim and Mapusa after a rival telecom company dug up BSNL cables and allegedly cut them while laying their own lines, prompting BSNL to lodge a complaint against the culprits at Porvorim police station. “We have put clear signs to indicate where our cables are,” a BSNL network engineer said, adding, “They don’t inform us when they are digging… we would have deputed our engineer otherwise.”
The TNN reporter pointed out that it is not the first instance where BSNL services have been crashed and neither is this an inadvertent mistake, BSNL sources argued that there have been clear instances of sabotage where cables are regularly cut or towers tampered with barely days after maintenance work has been completed. “BSNL is never given permission to lay new towers but private companies seem to be getting permission,” a senior BSNL official said, adding, “It is almost as if the government doesn’t want BSNL to work.”
It has to be recalled that recently BSNL has introduced unlimited free calls for landline customers to all landlines and cell phones across the country between 9pm and 7am. Many have received the SMS in this regards. Chairman and managing director of BSNL Anupam Shrivastava told the media that the move was aimed at checking the deteriorating number of landline customers and countering the growing popularity of mobile phones.
