to bdgarg@bsnl.co.in
cc pg_haryana@bsnl.co.in,pg_ab@bsnl.co.in
date Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 3:34 PM
subject Escalation of Grievance

Dear Mr. Garg,

1. I had applied for change of broadband plan(from home-250 to Home-UL-1350) on phone number almost a month ago around 15th June by submitting a written application duly signed for after the local telephone exchange insisted that it can't be done on phone. Since then only once they called up within 2 days and told me that the plan hasn't yet changed due to technical reasons they didn't elaborate and after that deadening silence.
2. I have been regularly contacting 01732-231017 on the status and I haven't got any positive response from them, infact most of the time the phone is not picked up.
3. I have followed the TRAI recommended method of
a) Calling the Call Center toll free number provided by the BSNL 18004241600 wherein they expressed in-ability to get the change done.
b) Called the nodal officer's at 0171-2603691 and 0171-2640050, the former doesn't pick up the phone and the latter has not responded back since one week.
c) I called you on your number and I was told you were in a meeting.

4. Kindly change my Broadband plan its one month overdue and BSNL continues to bill me at atrociously high dataflow prices making my usage of Internet un-tenable for the desired purpose. I shall be forced to seek disconnection of phone line if this grievance is not
resolved.

5. And yes I think BSNL is an ugly, inefficient and un-ethical monopoly and in any civilized country other than India this kind of behavior would invite heavy regulatory fines on the company.

No Thanks
-Tarun

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Context:
BSNL is the only provider of Broadband in my small town of Yamunanagar. And they are fugly monopolists. Airtel's behavior appears saintly in comparison to these 'fine folks'

Update 16-JUL-2008:

Next day the plan change happened and I got a phone call, 'aapka broadband plan change kar diya hai'. No I am not grateful to them. I think the turnaround time of one month is not acceptable nor is the the un-enviable uptime of services. But it is such a relief to be able to listen to music on shoutcast and being able to watch 'educational' videos on Youtube.

Update 17-JUL-2008:

What worked: I don't know really which approach worked with BSNL. Apart from the above escalation process I also complained to DoT ( Department of Telecommunications) through the ticketing system at Grievance portal for netizens of Indian State and from yesterday since the plan was changed have gotten half a dozen confirmation phone calls from Yamunanagar Telephone Exchange, Ambala Telephone Exchange and last one from Ministry of Communication. Previously a complaint with Grievance Portal for getting the BSNL Portal ID had also worked. BSNL Portal ID is required by broadband subscribers to view their dataflow usage if they are on a dataflow limited plan. To give you an idea of rationing of my usage of Internet, in the first 15 days of July I sent and received only 500 MB of traffic @2Mbps however the next day on 16th July I added another 500MB of dataflow from the rate unlimited connection of 512Kbps.

Bharti Airtel Ltd is one of the better ISPs in India. However their chief problem has been the lot of un-solicited pre-recorded voice calls and SMS spam they generate to annoy their customers in their quest for VAS profits. Advice to them: Get back to basics and fire your fugly marketers, reduce expenses and provide what people want, there is a lot of market in small towns where BSNL is the evil monopoly and your next billion rupee revenue is assured by expanding over there. Quality of service and billing was not an area they were castigated much until now. As a shareholder who holds a puny number of shares I hate to see them annoy paying customers like Balaji and yours truly. My medium term tip for Bharti Airtel stock would be 'SELL' they are going the Vodafone way of growth through acquisitions without worrying about existing customers.

Update May 24, 2008: Bharti has pulled out of the MTN acquisition deal. Good for them and good for its customers.

Finally after running around from piller to post, to BSNL, to Tata Indicom and to whoever would listen to me. I finally got Airtel to give me a 256Kbps(un-limited) Broadband connection. The Airtel guy claimed that this is the last port they had available in this area and I am lucky to get it the connection otherwise I could have waited for months at end for a broadband connection.

The Airtel sales guy insisted that I provide them a copy of my PAN card as this is the new TRAI regulation, so much for the year of broadband.

Airtel happens to be one of those service providers against whom I have seen least number of complaints and their loyal subscriber's actually defend them against criticism. I hope they meet my expectations just as well. Except for them 'spamming' their customers with mindless SMS'es and pre-recorded phone spam messages their service levels are actually better than other players.

Broadband according to TRAI is defined as an always on 256Kbps or above connection. For those of you in computer networking field know that broadband is 'nickname' for the technology leveraging multiple frequencies over the wire ethernet (or wirelessly) instead of just baseband frequency that normal ethernet for a LAN utilizes.

Airtel broadband installation 'engineer' also informed me that they offer an on-demand games service for just another 199 Rupees(+Taxes) and they have over 150 games. Good for them. Not sure how well it compares to gametap. My favorite strategy games seem to be all available at gametap.

One piece of advocacy I have always done is that Internet connectivity in India is always going to have similar usage of broadband as rest of the world, there is no point leveraging the Indian connection for most online services. Create world class services at indian pricing and you'll see an uptake of services. The youth in India are as happy to use youtube or orkut and now facebook as anywhere else in the world. There is little beyond property, classifieds, travel, news, shaadi and naukri that needs to leverage the indian connection, least of all gaming, gamers go where other gamers go.

Having applied for BSNL DataOne connection for my parents(who already own a BSNL phone-line) using their online form. Now that I am visiting my hometown, I decided to call up their complaint number at 198 and talk to a human to inquire about the status of broadband connection. Navigating through their menu options I couldn't figure out a way to talk to a human. I tried the same on their 1500 call-center number, no luck.
Next day I get a call from a BSNL employee.

BSNL Employee: Sir aapka telephone theek chal raha hai ?
( Is your telephone working fine ? )
Me: Yes it is, but this complaint was about not having gotten any DataOne connection which I applied for on the BSNL's site.
BSNL Employee: Why don't you come to the telephone exchange and deposit the security for the broadband connection and when it gets sanctioned you'll get it.
Me: Any idea how long will it take.
BSNL Employee: Sir why don't you fill up the application form first.
Me: I already did it online, several times.
BSNL Employee: Why don't you come to the exchange and fill the application form and deposit the security deposit.
Me: And how long will it take
BSNL Employee: It can take anything between 15 days to 4 months.
Me: So much for the year of Broadband in India.

BSNL employee disconnects the phone conversation...

Welcome to small-town India.
State owned BSNL is sometimes the only viable Internet provider, there is practically no competition and TRAI mentions its failure to convince the government to promote the free market by un-bundling BSNL's copper paid for by taxpayer's money, my money, your money, . And there is no mention of the principle of Net-Neutrality which should make MTNL/BSNL's attempt to provide Video services in Television format(euphemistically called IPTV) illegal.