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Come April 2, and State-run telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam’s (BSNL) customers will be able to video chat or connect to multiple people (enterprise customers) for conferencing between landline and mobile phones or both from anywhere in the world.
The company on Thursday unveiled an app through which its customers travelling abroad will be able to connect their landlines through mobile phones and make calls through them without attracting ISD charges.
The Fixed Mobile Telephony (FMT) service will, however, attract a monthly charge for which the company is working on tariff rates, Anupam Srivastava, Chairman and Managing Director, BSNL, told reporters here.
Working on tariff“Under FMT, we have virtually turned fixed lines into mobiles. Now, BSNL customers will be able to seamlessly connect their fixed line and mobile phones through a BSNL app,” he said. On tariffs, he said: “We are working on tariff for this add-on service. It will be fixed charge on monthly basis for both pre-paid and post-paid customers.
“However, customers will have to pay call rates as per the network they use.”
If BSNL customers use the landline network, landline plan rates would apply, and if they use mobile network, they will have to pay as per their mobile plan, he said, adding that BSNL also plans to introduce SMS facility on landline phones.
As part of the programme, the company said it was upgrading and expanding both mobile as well as fixed telephone network by converting the existing Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) exchanges with next generation network (NGN), which will be functional from April 2.
It has upgraded 660 telephone exchanges to NGN. BSNL is on the way to modernising and upgrading its mobile network under phase VII+. It plans to add additional 21,000 BTS (towers) with a total investment of over ₹2,000 crore. These new BTS also include more than 13,000 3G BTS.
Meanwhile, it launched a Wi-Fi hotspot at Katra (Jammu) for Vaishno Devi Shrine visitors. This is the 1000th hotspot launched by the company so far over the last one year.
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