Telecom subscribers in Punjab continued to face problems for the second day, with services by state-owned telecom operator BSNL to private cellular operators remained disconnected.

BSNL on Thursday had disconnected its services to five mobile operators including Airtel, Vodafone, Tata Teleservices, Reliance Communication and Idea on account of pending dues. The snapping of telecom services by BSNL left subscribers in the lurch as customers could not call up on each other''s network. BSNL landline subscribers could not make a call to mobile subscribers of the five mobile operators and vice versa.

However, mobile to mobile services among telecom operators remained unaffected. "The services to mobile operators including Airtel, Vodafone, Tata Teleservices, Reliance Communication and Idea continue to remain disconnected today.

Official said though BSNL could encash bank guarantee deposited by mobile companies for not paying dues, but the quantum of bank guarantee was much less than the outstanding dues."The bank guarantee amount is quite inadequate to recover dues from mobile operators," he asserted.

BSNL official said BSNL is to recover dues amounting to Rs 5.97 crore from Airtel, Rs 2.16 crore from Vodafone, Rs 3.16 crore from Idea, Rs 96 lakh from Reliance Communications and Rs 19 lakh from Tata Teleservices. The outstanding dues are in the shape of Interconnect User Charges (IUC) for the period April 2009 and August 2011.

The Cellular Operators Association of India had said that the action taken by BSNL had affected fixed line and mobile subscribers in Punjab. It had also said that the meeting with BSNL CMD to resolve the issue remained futile. In Punjab, BSNL has about 11.91 lakh fixed landline subscribers while mobile operators Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance, Tata Teleservices and Idea have subscribers base of 67.09 lakh, 42.30 lakh, 46.22 lakh, 34.27 lakh and 47.34 lakh respectively as on July 31, 2011.