The subscribers in Punjab continue to stay disconnected because of the tussle between BSNL and the private operators over the issue of pending dues.

"We are awaiting instructions from our headquarter ...the services to private telecom operators have not been restored so far," a senior official of BSNL said today. Due to disconnection of Points of Interconnect (PoI) telephone calls between private company mobiles and BSNL landline telephones are not taking place.

However, mobile to mobile services among telecom operators remained unaffected. BSNL Punjab circle is expecting instructions only on Monday as Sunday being holiday which means telecom services will remain out of order tomorrow as well. Taking up the petition of Reliance  Communications and Tata Teleservices, telecom tribunal TDSAT yesterday stayed BSNL form disconnecting services of private operators on account of inter-connectivity user charges. TDSAT had also directed BSNL to restore Points of Interconnection of private telecom operators.

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.

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. 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.