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Will unveil services in western, southern zones by August

Ramesh Sharma

The Railway Minister, Mr Lalu Prasad, flanked by the Ministers of State, Mr R. Velu (left) and Mr Naranbhai Rathwa, making the first call to inaugurate Integrated Train Enquiry System “Rail Sampark”, in the Capital on Tuesday. —

Our Bureau

New Delhi, July 17 The Indian Railways has launched the call centre services. People wanting to check train ticket reservation details, train arrival-departure times, availability of berths and fare enquiries can now call 139.

The services will initially be available in Delhi, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, the Union Railway Minister, Mr Lalu Prasad, said in press conference here today. These call centre services would be launched in the western and southern zones by August and in eastern zone by September.

However, phone calls to 139 can only be made from landline, wireless and WLL services of BSNL and MTNL now. This is because the private service providers want to charge their subscribers at higher levels than those proposed by the Railways.

For phone calls made from the four metros, the charges are Rs 1.20 for 3 minutes pulse. So the charges would be Rs 2.40 (for an enquiry call lasting 3-6 minutes), Rs 3.60 (for 6-9 minutes duration) and so on.

The enquiries from non-metros are going to be relatively expensive with the charges being Rs 1.20 for one minute pulse. That is, the charges would be Rs 2.40 (for an enquiry call lasting 1-2 minutes), Rs 3.60 (for 2-3 minutes) and so on.

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), the project implementing body, is in talks with other private telecom service providers.

In a few months the premium enquiry services comprising SMS alert, call back and fax facilities; and value added services comprising rail ticket reservation, hotel booking, booking tourism products and taxis would also be launched.

These services would be charged at Rs 2 per pulse. For these services, the Railways is trying to get other dedicated phone numbers (137 and 138) from the Department of Telecom.

The project is being implemented by BSNL and Bharat BPO. Bharat BPO is a consortium comprising Spanco Telesystems and Stracon Back Office Solutions.

In November 2006, IRCTC’s then Managing Director Dr PK Goel had awarded the contract to the consortium on a build-operate-transfer basis for 10 years (starting from November 2, 2006). The consortium has spent Rs 80 crore for the facility — and would incur an operational expenditure of Rs 30 crore annually. For running the call centre, 497 agents (northern zone), 402 agents (western zone), 311 agents (southern zone) were trained.

While the revenue from all basic service calls would accrue to the BSNL-Bharat BPO team and be shared between them only, the Railways would get 80 paise from each premium/VAS phone call with the rest would be shared by BSNL-Bharat BPO.

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