The Joint Action Committee will meet the CMD BSNL today, 27th April to discuss about the demands raised in the 15th December Strike. The details will be posted in the evening.

The CMD BSNL, on the demand of  the Joint Action Council, has fixed a meeting on 27th April to discuss about the issues raised in the 15th December Strike. On issues connected with DOT / government, the JAC is trying to meet the Secretary DOT and the Communications Minister.

Times have changed for BSNL. From  an annual revenue of Rs. 40,000 crore and profit of Rs. 10,000 crore and a surplus cash of about Rs. 35,000 crore in Banks in 2005-06, BSNL reached a position in 2011- 12 posting a loss of about Rs. 8,000 crore.

The downfall has been mainly due to the anti-PSU policy of the government and the utter inefficiency of the BSNL Management. Rather we can say, complete mismanagement. Revenue has come down and from 2006-07 company had started becoming in loss.

And for the first time, for day-to-day expenses, BSNL has started taking loan. So far it was a debt-free company. But after taking the present loan of Rs. 1383 crore from Union Bank, it has become an indebted company.

Since BSNL has posted loss for three consecutive years, even the ‘Mini Ratna’ status awarded to it may be taken back.

It is a serious situation. We have to take urgent steps to ensure that the government takes pro-BSNL decisions and the management is compelled to perform so that development and expansion work is done. The mindset of the workers also should be raised to higher levels.

There is no time to waste.

The meeting of the anomaly committee which was expected to meet today, in fact did not meet. The management is more worried about the contempt case and is finalising the orders to be issued in the case of only those officials who had gone to the court. Union is interested in settling all the cases of anomaly/aberration cases arisen out of the conversion from CDA to IDA payscale w.e.f. 01-10-2010. The union representatives in the committee has expressed its strong opinion in the matter and the minutes of the committee is almost finalised also after detailed discussions in the committee and outside also.The management should hold the meeting urgently and settle the issue.

The All India Census Report 2011 has already been published by the Government of India. According to the Census Report many C class cities which have crossed the five lakh population are eligible to be upgraded to B class with 20% HRA. Sahranpur is an example. Despite the issue was brought to the notice of the management, the orders have not been issued. It seems that the files are pending with the Director (HR). What we expect from the management is quick decisions, whether on developmental or staff matters. This undue delay has to be avoided if BSNL has to improve. I hope that the management will issue necessary orders in the case of not only Sahranpur but in other similar cases also.

Mobile companies will have to shell out significantly higher money for buying spectrum in future.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Monday suggested a base price that ranges between Rs 3,622 crore and Rs 14,480 per megahertz of airwaves. If these recommendations are accepted, the Government can hope to rake in at least Rs 7 lakh crore by 2014 by selling various chunks of spectrum bands.

The immediate impact of this will be on the new 2G players whose licences have been cancelled by the Supreme Court. These operators paid a total of Rs 1,650 crore for 4.4 Mhz of pan India spectrum in 2008. Now they will have to pay a minimum of Rs 16,000 crore for the same amount of spectrum.

The telecom regulator has suggested that auction for 2G spectrum should be done in a single phase open to all players, including incumbent players, which is contrary to what the new players wanted. But the TRAI has tried to strike a balance by suggesting that operators who already have maximum airwaves under the prescribed cap will not be able to buy more.

This will put the larger incumbent players like Airtel and Vodafone out of the race as they already have between 8 and 10 Mhz of spectrum in most key circles, which is the prescribed limit for GSM segment.

In order to make the payout less painful, the regulator has proposed to allow a two-year moratorium for auction winners with the option of paying 33 per cent of the bid amount initially and the balance over a 10- year period. The dampener however is that it has given the Government the freedom to impose a suitable interest rate in consultation with the Finance Ministry. TRAI said that spectrum should be sold in tranches of 1.25 Mhz with the operator allowed to acquire at least 5 Mhz in each circle.

For 700 Mhz band, the TRAI said that the auction can be held later in 2014 once the handset ecosystem develops. 700 Mhz band is used for offering Fourth Generation (4G) technology. The base price for this band has been pegged at Rs 14,480 crore per Mhz.

In 2010, the Government had fixed Rs 1,750 crore as the base price for 20 Mhz of broadband spectrum. Reliance Industries will stand to gain from this proposal as it can be the only pan Indian broadband player at least till 2014-15. This will hurt other players like Airtel who were looking to acquire more 4G broadband spectrum this year.

What will hurt the incumbent GSM players even more is that the TRAI has suggested immediate re-farming of 900 Mhz band. This frequency band is considered to be superior in terms of efficiency and capital investments.

At present this is being used by Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, which now the TRAI wants to take away once the initial licence expires (2014 onwards) and resell in the open market. Bharti’s total liability will be around Rs 30,000 crore in 2013-15 to retain existing spectrum.

Not surprisingly, telecom companies blasted the recommendations and said that if implemented it will impact affordability. (Report in the Business Lines)

The data released by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the association of GSM providers, reveals that the three mobile operators, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular account for more than 80% of the new GSM connections. All other companies, including BSNL and MTNL have provided  less than 20%. The data indicates one more thing, that the above three companies maximum utilised the benefit of the SC judgement cancelling 122 telecom licences given during the period of Raja on First Come First Served (FCFS) basis.

What is the position of BSNL in the present juncture. As already mentioned in this blog earlier, its market share in all the three – landline, wireless and total – services have been going down. Even it could not take much advantage of the cancellation of 122 licences of the new entrants.

After continuous pressures and struggles on the part of the workers under the leadership of the Joint Action Committee, Advance Purchasing Orders (APC) have already been finalised by the Corporate office for 15 million mobiles, 22 lakh new instruments, adequate cables and drop wires. Tender for Broadband modems are yet to be finalised.

What is the problem for the field officers, CGM/GM etc. to order the equipments and start providing mobile connections and improving the services. They seem to be in sleeping mode. They have to be woken up and made to work so that more connections could be given and services improved.

Our workers have to immediately act and make the management to act.

I have posted a few days back in this blog the TRAI statistics for February 2012 on the subscribers base and market share of each telecom company. According to that, BSNL has 226. 51 lakh landline connections, 977.51 lakh mobile connections and a total of  1204. 02 connections with market share of  70.07 %, 10.73% and 12.76% respectively.  BSNL is first in landline connections, 5th in mobiles and fourth in total connections.

DOT and MTNL were the only establishments  providing telephone connections till 1995. As per the neo-liberal policy pursued since 1991 by the Central Government, private companies were granted licences to provide mobile connections in 1995. But at the same time DOT and MTNL were discriminated and were denied permission to provide mobile services, though they could have easily done it. This was the starting of the many discriminations against DOT/MTNL and later BSNL. During the last 17 years since the private companies were allowed to provide telephone services, one after another, policy decisions were taken in support of the private companies, concessions and relaxations were granted and the public sector companies, BSNL and MTNL were denied of equal field. There was no difference between UPA and NDA governments in this matter. Though the slogan ‘Business is not the business of the government’ was coined by the NDA government, the UPA government implemented the same more aggressively. This was the starting point of the mega corruptions one after another in telecom sector, including the 2G scam. The beneficiaries were the private companies, including MNCs. The hands of BSNL/MTNL were tied denying procurement of equipment, bringing new technology, taking away all the cash on one pretext or other and what not. This is the major reason why BSNL has come down to the present position. The top management headed by the ITS also have a great share in the present debacle.

BSNL Employees Union has from the first pointed out the need for continued efforts to improve the services and also fought with the government/management for getting procurement of equipments etc. for the company. Though very slowly, there has been improvement in the services after the JAC started ‘Customer Delight Year’ programme, but more is to be done to save the BSNL.

BSNL Employees Union has ensured a better wage revision, promotion  policy and similar benefit to the workers. But unless the BSNL improves, all these gains may go to the drain. It is the duty of the workers at to ensure that the services are improved and the management and government is compelled to change the anti-PSU and anti-BSNL decisions. It is a serious and protracted struggle. We have to win and save and improve BSNL. Each and every worker should be part of this great struggle. The people of the country has got a right for better service from BSNL .Let us jointly shoulder this great responsibility and march ahead.

With the 7% increase for the Central government employees from January 2012, PSU employees were waiting for a good increase from April 2012. The DA increase from January was given earlier to them.

It has now been informed that there is no increase in IDA for PSU employees w.e.f. April 2012. It will continue at 56.7% till June, when a revision is to take place.