Postal dept to sell BSNL's telephone cards

The Department of Posts has entered into an agreement with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) for the sale of the latter's 'India Telephone Cards (ITC)' through select post offices in the state.

India Telephone Card is a prepaid card that enables one to make local, domestic long distance or international calls. It is an access code based service.

Addressing a press conference, Sanjaya Kumar, chief general manager of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (AP Telecom Circle), said: "Since the postal department has its reach across the state, we thought it would be apt to have a tie-up with them so that our customers can get the cards easily."

BSNL is also planning to provide other services such as sale of recharge coupons and pre-paid SIM cards at a later date through post offices, he added.

"The tie-up is also important because the tele-density in the state is expected to increase to 30 per cent in the next three years," he said.

BSNL is planning to go in for a retail, franchisee and sub-franchise model of selling recharge and SIM cards. "We expect the number of BSNL cellphone connections in the state to be around 20 lakh and the WLL phones to be around three lakh in the next financial year and that is why we plan to have the retail selling points," he said.

According to T S Govindarajan, chief postmaster general (AP Circle), the department has identified 15 post offices in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad for selling the IT cards.

"Apart from this, the cards would be sold in 126 post offices in the Hyderabad region (areas in Telangana), 105 in the Visakhapatnam region, 97 in the Vijayawada region and 121 in the Kurnool region," he added.

Govindarajan said that they were looking at computerising 42 head post offices in the state by the end of the current financial year.

"Out of the 104 head post offices, 24 have already been computerised. We are also looking at 63 sub-post offices where the programme would be undertaken," he said.

He added that once this programme is completed, the department would undertake electricity, water and telephone bill payments. For the current financial year, the AP Circle of the Department of Posts has set itself a business development target of Rs 90 crore, up from Rs 60 crore last fiscal.

The department, Govindarajan said, currently transacts around 40,000 accounts through the 'Western Union Money Transfer' scheme.

"The transactions reached is a significant achievement as we used to transact only 1,500 accounts when the scheme started three years back. Now we have 40,000 transactions," he said.