India’s state-run telecom carrier is right now under fire: Finance Ministry wants it to shutdown, and 1.67 lakh jobs are at stake. Employees haven’t received their salaries for two months, and things are pretty bad.
Amidst this chaos, a new report has emerged, which suggests that India’s MPs, the democratically elected leaders who represent us in the Parliament, wants to ditch BSNL.
And the reason is BSNL’s poor service!
Meanwhile, another reports indicates that BSNL’s privatisation may pose a security risk, and Govt. officials are studying its impact as well.
MPs Want To Ditch BSNL Due To Poor Service
Member of Parliament or MPs and Members of the Legislative Assembly or MLAs in states are by law, made to use BSNL’s SIM card for their official communications.
This is because BSNL is the state-run telecom carrier.
Now, as per reports coming in, MPs and MLAs wish to ditch BSNL service, and opt for private operators like Airtel or Vodafone-Idea and Jio.
Several MPs have complained regarding poor BSNL service, and network, and have written to House Committee of the Rajya Sabha. Based on these complaints, House Committee of the Rajya Sabha, headed by the BJP’s Om Mathur have proposed that MPs be allowed to use telecom service of private players now.
Note here, that MPs and MLAs are provided with free 50,000 calls per month, under Housing and Telephone Facilities (Members of Parliament) Rules, 1956.
And, a monthly allowance of Rs 1500 for broadband internet is also provided to the sitting MPs.
However, due to the poor service offered by BSNL, these MPs now want to ditch this free service, and opt for private telecom operators.
Congress’s B.K. Hariprasad, Mohd Ali Khan and Samajwadi Party’s Javed Ali Khan are among those who oppose using private operators, and have urged Govt. to empower BSNL to offer better services.
BSNL Privatisation Will Be A Security Threat
On the other hand, since the idea about shutting down BSNL and MTNL has been mooted, and talks about 100% privatisation of telecom network has been discussed, a new angle has emerged about security.
As per Business Standard report, Govt. officials are worried that if BSNL is made 100% private or shut down, then it will mean that all communication by Govt., Military and Judiciary will be on private networks. And this can pose some sort of security risks.
For the same reasons, Govt. officials and DoT are now studying telecom infrastructure and network of US and UK, where telecommunication is owned and maintained 100% by private players.
While AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile are the leading telecom operators of US, Britain has Three UK, EE, O2, Vodafone and BT for mobile services.
Govt. can also make BSNL and MTNL as exclusive service providers for the mission critical Govt departments.
An unnamed Govt. official said, “If shutting down of BSNL and MTNL is what FinMin wants, we will request them to at least consider continuing it for services like space, defence, intelligence, railways and government departments for internal usage,”
We will keep you updated, as more details come in.
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