C'magalur: BSNL broadband out of order

Customers face problems, drift towards private service providers

With the BSNL broadband completely going kaput in the district over the last eight days, the customers are put to trouble.

The sudden halt in functioning has only proved that BSNL has failed to face the stiff competition from the private broadband companies and provide quality service to the customers.

According to the sources in the BSNL, the company is incurring Rs 1 to 1.5 lakh loss everyday, thus making the total loss of Rs 10 to 12 lakh in the last one week. The number of BSNL broadband connections in the district is over 10,000. In Chikmagalur city alone the number of connection is nearly 1,200. 

The customers are depending on the BSNL broadband for availing various services like booking bus, railway and plane tickets, e-market, net banking etc. Even when the SSLC and PUC results were out last week, the students had to literally struggle to find out their results online. With the BSNL broadband creating trouble very often, the customers who are fed up with the development have already begun to disconnect the BSNL connection and are switching on to other service providers.  Two broadband systems function in Chikmagalur district centre. One of these systems was stopped a week ago, where as another system is all set to stop functioning with in four to five hours, due to which the internet users are not being able to browse or connect to the internet. 

“The BSNL internet service has not been functioning since a week. If we call the BSNL office, we get a readymade answer that the server in Bangalore has stopped functioning. The staff and the officers do not explain to us the problem. In a competitive era, if this is the quality of BSNL service, how can they survive the tough competition from private broadband service providers,” asked an internet customer Rakesh.

The broadband problem has also affected the print and television media offices which too are dependent on the BSNL broadband for sending news to the headquarters. One of the cyber centers owner suspects the involvement of the officer from the BSNL district office in the recent development. As he says that the officer might have involved in this to provide profit to the private service providers.