Tamil Nadu - Chennai

BSNL campaign to promote e-payment

CHENNAI: Having set its sights on bringing an estimated one million landline users into the broadband fold by 2010, BSNL Chennai Telephones has now launched a campaign to get more subscribers to pay monthly bills online.

Chennai Telephones now has a broadband subscriber base of 2.5 lakh users within the larger pool of 10 lakh landline connections. Though about one lakh subscribers, both broadband and landline, are currently registered on designated BSNL websites, e-payments currently only aggregated about 20,000 transactions a month, sources said.

Since DataOne connections are given only to those with an active landline of the BSNL, this effectively means that users can make their landline bill remittances online even if they are out of town during the pay-by-date period.

Some time ago, a high-end server was installed at the KK Nagar exchange in anticipation of a manifold increase in online traffic — “even in a scenario where all one million users make their payments online”, according to an official.

As an incentive to promote its e-billing and payment format, the service provider has extended 1 per cent discount against the bill amount.

With the installation of the new server, e-payments are 24/7 .

Recently, Chennai Telephones commenced e-mailing bills to its one lakh users registered on the official website.

The bills in pdf format reach subscribers well in advance of the postal despatch. Users registered on billchn.bsnl.co.in can also get to periodically monitor their usage, an official said.

Registered users can also add/delete GSM numbers for which they make remittances online.

Measures are under way to encourage more users to register on the e-bill or other official sites of the BSNL that are all linked to a common payment gateway.

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