BSNL continues to dilly-dally on paging industry bailout

Cos worried as the issue of making incoming calls to pagers costlier hangs fire

Neeraja Kumar

New Delhi, Aug 26: TWO months after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) recommended that incoming calls to pagers should become a premium service, and asked the fixed service operators to work out the finer details of the same with paging operators, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is still dragging its feet over the issue.

Meanwhile, the ailing paging service operators, who are worried that the recommendation might not be implemented in time to save the beleaguered paging industry, had again approached TRAI last week and asked it to ensure speedy implementation.

The main concern expressed by the paging operators is that while the BSNL has “in principle agreed to implement the recommendation and share a part of the ensuing additional revenue with the paging operators”, it is yet to take a concrete action on the same.

Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) meanwhile has constituted a committee to look into the matter and to finalise the recommendations, add sources.

Six months ago, Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had made a reference to the TRAI for making calls made to paging companies to send messages to pagers, costlier, and to share the additional revenue thus earned with the cash starved paging companies.

This has been a long standing demand of the paging operators, who say that while the revenues earned by the basic operators had gone up due to the calls made to pagers, thecompanies have not received any benefits of the same.

The paging industry is in the red. Many of the comapnies have shut shop and exited from the business. The others are also barely managing to keep their head above water. This relief was meant to bail out the paging companies.

Meanwhile, the issue of working out the viability of paging companies and giving further reliefs to them in terms of giving an extension of six months in the effective date of licence, charging concessional rate of interest and recovering outstanding amounts in installments, is still pending with the Tariff Commission. The relief measures were sent to the Tariff Commission by the DoT six months ago. However, the Tariff Commission is yet to give its decision on the relief package.