The Hindu Business Line : MTNL teams up with BSNL to target corporate clients

STUNG by the exodus of its high net worth corporate customers to private telephony operators, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd, operating in the Mumbai and Delhi circles, is now cashing in on its cousinship with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd to offer corporates one-window services to the latter's all-India operations.

The bulk of corporate customers so far acquired has been from the public sector. "Indian Oil Corporation, State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank (with whom MTNL and BSNL signed a Memorandum of Understanding recently) are some of our corporate customers," said Mr R.L. Dube, Executive Director, MTNL (Mumbai circle). Its latest and prize acquisition is ICICI Bank, he added.

And if one argues that this is a cosy, mutually protective association between mostly public sector companies, MTNL officials beg to differ.

"The private sector behaves no better," said a marketing official. "If Tata Teleservices has been able to get all the Tata group companies to shift to its telephony services, is it a surprise that public sector companies will want all other public sector companies to shift to their services?"

In any case, said Mr Dube, MTNL is making inroads into the private sector as well. In particular, those companies that have a pan-India presence, with locations in areas where many of the private operators do not offer full-fledged services.

The other advantage is that the MTNL-BSNL combine offers every kind of telephony service in almost every circle in the country, something no other single private company does. "We have landline, GSM wireless, CDMA wireless, leased line, Internet, broadband, VPN networks, VSAT, ISDN and every other service that one can think of. At MTNL, we recently launched our fixed wireless services too," said Mr Dube.

Corporates customers are, of course, offered a bulk discount on their bills. If the corporate is big enough there is only a single officer, the account officer, with whom it has to interface, whatever service it requires, anywhere in the country, said Mr Dube.

"Our getting ICICI Bank is a good indication that we are set to acquire more corporate clients, even in the private sector," said an MTNL officer.

In fact, MTNL, in association with BSNL, is racing to get its retail broadband operations across the country ready "before Reliance Infocomm does," as one official described their deadline. "We are going to have a range of broadband offerings," said Mr Dube. "We are using DSL and ADSL technology on a pilot basis on our copper lines, we are laying optical fibre cable wherever we can."

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