Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.: Ruling the Indian Telecommunication Market

Analysts pointed out that the prices offered by BSNL were even less than the costs incurred by some customers if the call was made either by another CellOne customer or from a BSNL landline phone. On the other hand, private operators such as Bharti and Essar could offer free incoming calls only if the subscriber belonged to the same network. BSNL's decision to waive airtime charges on long distance calls also attracted criticism. Subscribers were now able to save the Rs 2 that had to be paid for airtime. On the other hand, subscribers of private operators still had to pay this charge. A senior official of a private cellular service said, "It's completely anti-competitive. BSNL has massive cash flows and their profits so huge that they can afford to do this..."

In addition, it set up 81 quality assurance centers across India in cities such as Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chandigarh. These centers studied the quality of all the telecom supplies made to BSNL and periodically conducted market research to evaluate the services offered by BSNL and other players, from the customer's point of view. BSNL also established call centers across the country to answer customer queries and to provide information. The company further planned to offer a range of value added services to its subscribers by mid 2003 (such as news, sports news, weather forecasts, jokes and stock market quotes through text messaging). To enhance its coverage and extend it to all the segments of the telecom industry, BSNL entered the WLL market in late 2002, with its Tarang service...