Bicom Telecom

PUNE: Are your STD bills stripping your purse thin? Then, look forward to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited’s (BSNL) voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) plans. Your telephony woes may soon come to an end if BSNL gets the nod from New Delhi to roll out its VoIP network in the city.

According to BSNL principal general manager R.L. Dube, the network will allow customers to make STD calls to five cities — Hyderabad , Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Bangalore — using a pre-paid card,which contains a user ID and password to access the network. This network offers lower STD rates compared to normal lines. The telecom behemoth has tested waters in the city by providing such pre-paid cards to 500 users, and the response has been encouraging.

“The feedback has been sent to New Delhi . I hope we will be able to implement this programme in the city soon,” Dube said. He allayed fears over the voice quality, saying the compression rate in a VoIP network was 1:4 as against the 1:8 ratio in Internet telephony. Moreover, since the Internet is a public domain, disturbances are bound to happen. This will be a dedicated network, he added. VoIP, in fact, is just one of many tele-bonanzas the company has lined up for the city. Next on the agenda is expansion of its limited mobility (WLL) service. Beginning next week, 15,000 new WLL connections will be provided in the city, covering four short-distance charging areas (SDCAs) — Pune, PCMC, Khadakwasla and Loni. BSNL has tied up with Hyundai for the supply of hand-sets, for which a refundable deposit of Rs 5,000 will be taken.

In the second phase, the company will cover 13 more SDCAs around Pune, with 30,000 connections. While new subscribers will have to pay an instalment of Rs 2,400, existing land-line users can avail of WLL without any extra cost, Dube said. The WLL plans will be followed by a broadband service, for which BSNL has tied up with a Bangalore-based firm called iSpatial.

Asked why the company couldn’t provide the service on its own, an official said: “Broadband is an uncharted territory for us.” Pune, along with Bangalore and Kolkata, is one of the three cities where BSNL will be starting this service, which has been tested in Kolkata. ISpatial will use BSNL’s infrastructure and the service will be provided on a revenue-sharing arrangement. The tariff and the revenue-sharing formula are yet to be decided. Tariff structuring of the service is crucial as the company is planning to offer virtual private network (VPN) facilities in the initial phase.