The Hindu : City's phone system ranked the best

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 16, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram

City's phone system ranked the best

By Our Staff Reporter

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM May 15. Thiruvananthapuram city (Station) of Thiruvananthapuram Telecom District has won the DoT national award for the best-maintained urban telephone system in the country, on an appraisal of the Quality of Telecom Services (QOTS) for the year 2002-03. The award has been won by Thiruvananthapuram Urban, in Category 1, ie, the station with more than one lakh lines. Thiruvananthapuram had won the award for the best maintained urban telephone system in the State in 2001.

The city's telephone system emerged on top in the country on the basis of several criteria such as direct exchange line growth, telephone density, call success rate, provision of value- added services, PCO density and useability, subscriber feedback, fault repair records, billing complaint records, public relations, user satisfaction, waiting period for new connections, time taken for effecting new connections, shifts etc.

In the assessment, which was carried out by M/s S.M Telesys, the urban telephone system won full marks for telephone density, public relations, billing complaint record and public relations.

The score for user satisfaction was 14.81 out of 15, the Deputy General Manager (Urban), S. Jyothisankar said.

Thiruvananthapuram is also the first city, among all telecom districts in the country to go completely paperless, offering all commercial services from booking to billing, on-line.

With 81 telephone exchanges and 16 customer service centres (CSCs), Thiruvananthapuram is also the first Secondary Switching Area (SSA) in the country to have on-line registration for new phone connections for all the exchanges.

A customer can make his registration for a new phone from any of the customer service centres. The customer service centres have been envisaged as the single window system for subscribers throughout the telecom district for booking new connections or for applying for shifting the existing connection to a new location.

The online call centre, `1500', which functions round-the- clock and offers up-to-date indicator changes is cited to be one of the strengths of Thoruvananthapuram Telecom.

On an average, the call centre receives around 800 to 1,200 calls a day. Using Telecom's National Directory Query _ the Internet-based enquiry system _ of `183', one can make directory enquiries in over 25 cities in the country.

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