Aircel' struggle seems to be too good for BSNL, at least in the Tamil Nadu circle as the latter welcomed over 1.86 lakh Aircel users onto its network in the last few weeks. Aircel users in the second half of February month started facing no network issues, thanks to the company's financial woes. At the end of February, Aircel officially confirmed that it has filed for bankruptcy at NCLT Mumbai bench, leaving all the 84 million customers in disarray. Witnessing the struggle of Aircel customers, state-run telecom operator BSNL started aggressively promoting its network in Tamil Nadu circle asking users to join the network.
And these campaigns from the company seems to have paid off as a BSNL official today confirmed that they welcomed 1,86,135 Aircel customers onto the network. These numbers are from Tamil Nadu circle, and it doesn't include numbers of Chennai, Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts. The official also confirmed that these requests are of the last few weeks.
Addressing reporters at a press conference today, BSNL Tamil Nadu chief general manager R Marshal Antony Leo stated that the company is working closely with Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to resolve the issues faced at the time of porting. "Our officials are in touch with the department of telecommunications for the purpose, and we are trying to resolve issues (arousing out of porting in)," he said.
And as stated the numbers mentioned by the official doesn't include that of Chennai city, and it's rumoured that BSNL is receiving a massive number of MNP requests from Aircel customers in Chennai circle too.
As per Trai's latest data, BSNL has close to 10% of market share in Tamil Nadu circle, which comes to around 82.5 lakh subscribers. Since the time of MNP introduction, BSNL has been receiving 1.5 lakh MNP requests every month. "We are likely to increase our mobile subscriber base by anywhere between three and four lakh due to the surge in the number of Aircel subscribers porting to BSNL in the Tamil Nadu circle," Leo said.
Overall, BSNL has been doing an excellent job in the Tamil Nadu circle, and the same is expected in other circles too. It will be interesting to see how private operators such as Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular are going at the moment.
