Welcome Guest Login | Register | Site Map | | Make TelecomTiger my homepage     
Telecom News
Enterprise |  Policy & Regulation |  Mobiles & Tabs |  Corporate |  VAS |  People Movement  |  Technology  |  LTE
Policy & Regulation
Call drops a legacy of last government; turned BSNL, MTNL loss-making entities during the UPA regime: Ravi Shankar Prasad
TT Correspondent |  |  01 Oct 2015

Seeking to turn tables on Congress over the call drops issue, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today said this problem is a legacy of the last government and he is clearing thew "mess" left by them, Reports PTI.

He also said that Congress must be asked why state-owned BSNL and MTNL turned loss-making entities during the UPA regime.

Addressing a press conference here on the call drop menace, Mr Prasad said he is clearing the mess left by the Congress-led UPA government and during their tenure the Sanchar Bhawan - the seat of Telecom Ministry - was known for all the wrong reasons including "corruption, loot and impropriety".

The Congress had yesterday demanded sacking of Telecom Minister for his "incompetence" in resolving the issue of frequent call drops experienced by consumers.

Congress General Secretary Shakeel Ahmed had said it was becoming difficult to talk on mobile "for even five seconds" and the problem was more in the networks of state-owned MTNL and BSNL.

Responding to the Congress' charge, Mr Prasad said, "Call drop is also a legacy of previous government. We inherited it. The weakness in telecom sector that came due to lack of monitoring...call drop came from other factors... lack of network improvement, optimisation of network equipment."

The Minister added that BSNL and MTNL were making profit in 2004 till the time the then NDA government was in power, but the two firms became loss-making in 10 years of the Congress rule.

"BSNL's profit was Rs. 10,183 crore in 2004 and after ten years, when we came back, BSNL was suffering a loss of Rs. 8,234 crore. Who is responsible for this. Will the Congress party government give answer to this? MTNL in 2004 was in profit of Rs. 938 crore and in 2014, it was suffering a loss of Rs. 2,843 crore," Mr Prasad said.

The Minister further said there were vested interests in in the last government which were weakening the two state-run companies.

"I want to challenge the Congress government for an open debate on the poor state of BSNL and MTNL," he added.

To a question on call drops becoming a political issue in Bihar ahead of assembly elections there and he being called as 'Call Drop Minister', Mr Prasad said, "Nitish Kumar has to answer on development of Bihar.

"Why crime is increasing? Why in 9 years there has been no industry? Why no private university is there? These are the issues. Call drop situation is improving in Bihar," he said.

Mr Prasad said that BSNL and Telecom Department have been working to fix the problem in Bihar, just like the way it is being done for other states.

PTI

    
 mail this article    print this article    Show and Post comment
01 Oct 2015(IST)  
Whitepaper
Maintain Business Continuity with Cisco ASR 9000 nV Technology
It is a virtual chassis solution where a pair of ASR 9000 routers acts as a single device by maintaining a single contr...read more
Simplify Your Network with Cisco ASR 9000 nV Technology
With the new Cisco Network Virtualization (nV) technology in the Cisco ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers, se...read more
Cisco Small Cell Solution: Reduce Costs, Improve Coverage
It is designed to address the challenge of mobile service coverage and to expand network capacity...read more