The Hindu Business Line : BSNL strike: Mobile players seek TRAI intervention

THE ongoing strike by the employees of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has affected cellular services across the country. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has shot off an SOS to the telecom regulator, seeking its intervention in restoring interconnection with the State-owned company.

In a letter written to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), cellular operators said: "We wish to inform the authority in this regard that this indefinite work-to-rule strike called by the BSNL has started disrupting the cellular mobile services, as calls at various point of interconnection (POI) have started failing. While in some cases BSNL has restored the failures after a couple of hours, most of the other POI failures still remain unrestored."

Operators including BPL, Hutch, Bharti, Aircel and Idea have listed out specific instances of disrupted POIs in the letter.

Point of interconnection is the physical place where the mobile network gets connected to BSNL's telecom network.

If POI is disrupted, then cellular subscribers would not be able to call BSNL's fixed-line users in that region.

The operators said the network failure was adversely impacting the quality of service.

"It would be pertinent to mention that due to large-scale call failures the subscribers are getting agitated and taking their anger on the mobile operators customer care services. The complaint calls are therefore increasing drastically," the COAI said.

BSNL employees have been on a work-to-rule strike for the past few weeks over issues relating to pay scale and promotion.

The employee unions are planning a major demonstration at BSNL's headquarters in New Delhi on Saturday.

Meanwhile, reports of telecom services being disrupted due to the agitation are coming in from various parts of the country. Computerised railway reservation and the mobile-to-landline system were hit on Friday across West Bengal.

BSNL's own fixed line subscribers in parts of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan were also hit by the lack of service. BSNL officials, however, said services have not been affected significantly due to the strike, except for the North East.

TRAI officials said that while they could not intervene in BSNL's internal problems with the union, it was looking at ways to address the complaint from the COAI quickly.

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