Each BSNL employee attending a customer phone call gives you another number. Its a monopolistic crime of un-imaginable proporations against indian broadband users. If there are a lot of people who feel the same please consider launching a movement to surrender BSNL phonelines. Convince your relatives to surrender a BSNL phoneline and serve the nation.

It is criminal to support inefficiency of BSNL through public money. Please consider writing to your elected representatives in favor of privatization of BSNL.

After visiting BSNL exchange 6 times and finally managing to get a broadband connection at my parent's place in Yamunanagar. One and a half months later I am still trying to get the authentication details to BSNL's portal for viewing dataflow http://bbservice.bsnl.in. Not that the damn site works anyway.

Update:
Interestingly amongst BSNL+MTNL customers some 4.4 million(100K/month approx.) plus wired phone lines were surrendered by their customers between Apr-2006 to Feb 2008.
Source DOT Network Status Feb 2008 .The same has been uploaded at my site because GOI sites have this annoying habit of removing content so if you are unable to access the previous link try this one DOT Network Status Report 2008

Reliance audacious entry into the mobile market space ( initially through wireless on local loop regulatory backdoor ) along with calling party pays regime combined with lifetime incoming free GSM phones together created the required network externalities for the explosion in mobile phone usage in India. The economic boom initially powered by investment in housing+automobile sectors and later the spending power of IT+BPO crowd has resulted in communication revolution( anyone remember the minister Sukhram from HP ). So much so that the puny spectrum allocated initially to mobile operators has repeatedly run out resulting in in-convenience to huge number of subscribers.

The latest move of GSM operators in India driven not as much by regulators but by enlightened self-interest should help reduce congestion and improve voice quality for mobile phone users. Sharing network infrastructure, usage of flat(and cheaper) billing models, open application APIs for SMS(and other GSM hooks) integration, number portability (not just across operators but also to a different circle) apart from signal tower infrastructure can go a long way in reducing costs and growing the market. The obsession with ARPU increases through mindless VAS requires loads of highly paid marketing executives, constant redevelopment, huge content teams, with thousands of call-center sales executives and some very un-happy customers who don't care to have their normal mobile ringtone replaced. Reducing costs instead and increasing market-size or (providing working Internet to existing customers) seem like easier wins.

BSNL employees were seen in a procession under some red colored communist banners on MG Road in Bangalore today demanding bonus. Apparently they didn't couldn't hear the silent and sometimes verbose taunts of the members of the common public(including yours truly) as to why they don't deserve a bonus. There doesn't seem to be a reason for strike in 2007 in India. With telecom sector booming, if these employees are actually producing any useful output, then any of the private sector telcos should be happy to hire them right!!!.
Message from this blog to BSNL employees
"TAKE A HIKE"

Airtel GSM network for pre-paid network in Pune just stopped working about half an hour ago, without any warning of any sort. Don't know if it happened nationwide. Suddenly you hear first level support from airtel contact centers claiming 'server is down'. If the server is down get a redundant server online dudes. Airtel also happens to be most persistent SMS/Phone spammer around in India. Repeated calls asking them to stop sending un-solicited SMS'es are met on deaf ears. Didn't TRAI fail in its duty as a regulator in not fostering a free-market environment by not implementing number portability. As a side note I am an un-happy corporate Airtel Blackberry user. Extremely bad network policies, they not only use an HTTP proxy, the proxy for India is sitting far away at UK. TCP/IP doesn't work at all, so no ssh and Airtel customer support claims that the device can't operate as a modem for a PC ( probably because they want to sell datacards as a separate product ).

Update 13-OCT-2007:
TCP/IP works after specifying APN: airtelgprs.com and to use airtel blackberry as a soft-modem from your PC follow the links here
Recently the speeds on airtel blackberry have improved(maybe its better in Bengaluru) and are a bit more than a typical dial-up connection from BSNL but still not usable enough for VPN'ing to office.