Subscribers sore as MTNL phones go dead

MUMBAI: Union communication minister Pramod Mahajan completed one year in office on September 2.
The ministry went to town with its report card: one village telephone every five minutes, one mobile phone every ten seconds, one km of optical fibre every five minutes etc.
However, in Mumbai, to which Mr Mahajan belongs, 15,000 phones were dead until recently.MTNL’s chief general manager K.N. Mahadevan claims that this figure has now been brought down to 5,700.
But several subscribers are angry that MTNL takes a long time to restore their lines. “For 20 days my phone did not work despite repeated complaints,’’ a subscriber from Bandra, M.K.B. Nair told TNN.
“I was compelled to use my mobile phone and incur a heavy expense,’’ he added.
In July, as many as 50,000 phones were dead, MTNL officials said.
Secretary of Mumbai Telephone Subscribers’ Association, George Chalapuram said, “Every day, we receive complaints regarding ‘dead’ phones from all parts of Mumbai and Navi Mumbai.
There are several instances, where MTNL has not been able to rectify the phone faults for weeks together. Since Mr Mahajan is from Mumbai we thought that he would give priority to improving services in the metropolis. But that has not happened.’’
Mr Mahadevan said nearly 4,000 of the 5,700 phones now dead are from areas between Bandra and Kandivli.
He disagreed that MTNL’s service has deteriorated and added that this year, “far fewer’’ phones have developed faults compared to last year. The phones stop working when rain water enters the cables.
When asked, why the problem of dead phones persisted even when there was no rain, Mr Mahadevan replied that most of the 5,700 odd phones became unoperational during the rains last month. He admitted that some of the phones have been down for nearly two months.
He said that in areas like Kandivli, the restoration of phones was hampered because of the municipal corporation’s restrictions on road digging. MTNL blames phone faults to extensive digging of city roads by different utilities. Mr Mahadevan said the old paper core cables were being replaced with jelly-filled cables which have better water resistance, but even these cables are not totally immune to seepage. “We hope to replace nearly 2,000 kms of paper core cables by 2004’’, he said. Which means that for another two years there will be no respite from dead phones. Ducting of cables has also been undertaken so that cables are not damaged due to digging or by flood water. Nearly 50-55 per cent of the phone cables have been ducted, Mr Mahadevan said. Mr Chalapuram, however, said the entire ducting progr- amme on which MTNL spent crores of rupees needs to be investigated.