The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : 62,000 apply for BSNL prepaid connection

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Sep 02, 2005

Kerala

Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

62,000 apply for BSNL prepaid connection

Staff Reporter

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As many as 62,863 persons submitted applications for BSNL's pre-paid mobile connections on Thursday when State-wide booking for the `Excel' service resumed after a year.

The Chief General Manager BSNL, Kerala, S. A. Thomas told The Hindu that the maximum number of applications came from Ernakulam (including Idukki)- 10,900.

While 9,000 applications were received from Palakkad district, 8,000, were received from Kannur. On an average 5,000 applications were received from all districts; a large number of these applications were from rural areas, he said.

The connections would be issued from September 20 onwards. Unlike last year when the booking could be made free of cost, BSNL collected Rs. 551 from each customer this time. According to Mr. Thomas this was to prevent a repeat of last year's situation when 20,000, out of the 2.2 lakh people who applied for a connection, did not take the SIM card.

These 2.2 lakh applications had come in a week's time with 65,000 people giving applications on the last day. In the coming four months, BSNL's mobile subscriber base would go up from the present 8.5 lakhs to 18 lakhs. (According to figures available with BSNL there are about 22 lakh GSM mobile connections in Kerala for all operators put together.)In this period about 1,200 Base Transreceiver Stations (BTS) would be added to the present network of 750.

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