After almost a month of disrupting its connectivity to private operators Airtel, Vodafone, Tata Teleservices, Reliance Communications and Idea Cellular in the state of Punjab, the state-owned operator BSNL today resumed its services between its landline connections and the mobile operators.
BSNL restored the services following fresh directions issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). Earlier last week, BSNL had ignored similar directions of TRAI, after which private mobile operators again approached the regulatory body.
On September 29, BSNL’s Punjab circle had disconnected the services to five mobile operators including Airtel, Vodafone, Tata Teleservices, Reliance Communications and Idea, on account of pending dues amounting to Rs 13 crore. BSNL has about 11.91 lakh landline customers, while mobile operators Airtel, Vodafone and Idea had 67.09 lakh, 42.30 lakh, and 47.34 lakh subscribers respectively as on July 31.
On October 3, BSNL restored the services to RCom and Tata Teleservices as telecom tribunal TDSAT stayed BSNL from disconnecting the services of the two private operators.
Subscribers of these operators in the area found it difficult to make calls to BSNL phone numbers and BSNL subscribers were not able to connect to subscribers of other mobile operators as well.
