For those of you who live in small towns where BSNL is the only broadband service provider. Were you also appalled by Preity Zinta endorsing BSNL landlines while 4.4 million of those have been surrendered by un-happy users in past 2 years. Source: http://www.dot.gov.in/network/2008/nsfeb08.pdf and http://voicendata.ciol.com/content/columns/editorial/108050101.asp. According to me BSNL is a not so pretty(pun intended) speed bump on the road to information Super Highway in India. I agree with Atanu's advice to BSNL
<Quote>
* get rid of all restrictions on Internet telephony, the killer app for the illiterate and poor.
* stop censoring the Internet, and restricting the use of technologies such as encryption
* take action against those sending spam from India
* allow the nation to have a truly independent regulator, with genuine teeth
</Quote>

The image is a screenshot of punjab.bsnl.co.in.

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

--------
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.

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.

10,000 landlines being surrendered per day
With pre-paid cellular phones with free incoming for a lifetime all set to explode the mobile phone market in India BSNL gets a run for its money. It seems manifest destiny of old world telecom companies to support the growth of networks ( read Internet ) that would eventually kill their very business model.
The business model of voice telecoms, who charge you money by a minute and spend most of it in expensive un-needed call routing/billing systems where simpler VOIP stacks with flat billing would do. Think yahoo voice/gtalk and a host of flat billing model Internet based 'phone' services.