BSNL has set a revenue target of Rs 400 crore from the Ernakulam Secondary Switching Area (SSA) during the current fiscal.

The company achieved Rs 388 crore in the previous financial year and will provide various facilities to customers to achieve the current year financial target, Dr P T Mathew, principal general manager, BSNL, said at a press meet.

Customer base

BSNL is aiming to provide 25,000 landline connections in the current fiscal and has introduced new unlimited plans such as UL 500 and UL 600 for rural and urban customers in landline sector. The broadband target for the current year is 40,000.

The broadband capacity has been increased by 20,000 to meet the additional requirement, he said.

On mobile number portability, he said about 4.5 lakh mobile customers had migrated to BSNL from other cellular operators in Kerala. Out of which 85,713 are in the Ernakulam division. In India, Kerala attracted the highest migrations, he added.

In Ernakulam and Idukki, BSNL has already provided 12 lakh mobile connections and 2.5 lakh new connections would be provided this year, he said adding the effort would be to improve connectivity in Idukki by setting up more BTS. The GSM target for the current fiscal was 2.5 lakh connections.

BSNL has also introduced new roaming free plan for prepaid customers. The plan charge is 152.

The company also sought to expand its Wi-max and GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) subscription base with 10,000 more connections each under the SSA, he said, adding that charges for installation and activation have been reduced to 1/3rd.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth has increased from 512 Kbps to 2Mbps. He said 20 per cent discount in the bill is also available for PSU's and government employees.

BSNL Ernakulam is also conducting In-Plant Training for engineering students to give an exposure to the working telecommunication equipments deployed in BSNL.

The richness of the course contents, quality of BSNL in delivering the practical exposure to the telecom network popularized it and was oversubscribed in the previous year. The duration of the training is one week.

> sajeevkumar@thehindu.co.in