BSNL's OneIndia plan finds few takers

Only around 0.6% of BSNL's 38 million landline subscribers have so far chosen to migrate to the new plan.

Just a little over 0.6 per cent of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd's 38 million landline subscribers have so far chosen to migrate to the company's OneIndia tariff plan, under which nationwide call rates were slashed to Re 1 per minute.

"Over 230,000 users have moved to the OneIndia Plan. We have about 7,000 pending allocations. We expect a total of about 240,000 subscribers to be on this plan soon," BSNL Chairman and Managing Director A K Sinha said.

When contacted, BSNL executives maintained that it was too early to evaluate the migration numbers as the plan had been in place for less than a month.

However, going by the company's own admission, the PSU requires a 40 per cent increase in call traffic to make up for the Rs 600 crore loss that it is likely to incur on account of the reduced OneIndia tariffs.

Sources estimated that the Rs 600 crore loss could be undone if 5,000,000 subscribers, with monthly bills of over Rs 500, switched to the OneIndia plan. They also claimed that the company would achieve this target over the next six months.

Another factor behind the slow growth was that the Department of Telecom was yet to accept the company's proposal for STD calls through the 95 dialing system across the country.

"There can be increased takers for the OneIndia plan only when 95 dialing is permitted for calls across India," BSNL sources said.

BSNL's advertising campaigns have also been handicapped as it is yet to appoint new advertising agencies for them. The contract with agencies that handled its earlier campaigns expired in December 2005.

Although BSNL has taken out newspaper advertisements, large scale promotion has been hampered as the new agencies are not in place yet, BSNL sources added.

The PSU is also confronted by the lack of awareness that customers must present a written submission to migrate to this plan. BSNL is carrying an in-house campaign in phone bills, sources added.