The woes of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL)landline customers will soon be a thing of the past. With complaints pouring in from different quarters over faulty landline connections and cables in Kochi city, the authorities have decided to replace the cables with optical fibres.
The complaints are mainly regarding the difficulties of transferring land phones and repairing faulty lines due to the non-availability of cable pairs. With major development work going on in the city the workers are unable to trace or locate the copper cables laid for the telephone lines or repair them. Most of the telephone cables in the city are beneath the main roads and digging them for repair work is near impossible.
Now the focus is to ensure that high speed broadband connection be made available to customers which can include voice call and television channels. Jose Joseph, sub divisional engineer, Ernakulam, said that the work for Fibre To The House (FTTH) cabling has already started in the city. Wherever possible the FTTH will be laid according to the demand of the customers.
“Already it is available in 420 buildings in the city which offers connection to 1,700 customers. As this is expensive, at least 20 connections for a FTTH cable are required to make it feasible,” he said. One FTTH cable can provide 32 connections and laying this cable for limited customers will incur a huge loss. There is great demand for broadband connection in the city and optical fibre cables will be laid in more areas in a phased manner which can help reduce the complaints of the landline customers, he said.
With the introduction of the new cable system, broadband will be available at 100 kbps speed. Already 1,700 connections have been provided in the city which has high speed for broadband. BSNL Employees Union president Peethambaran said that shortage of cable and other materials led to difficulties in redressing the complaints. Under the present circumstances, it is not possible to lay new cables or repair the copper cable lines. However, the broadband connections in Ernakulam SSA are increasing and it is in the list of top SSAs in the country. With the introduction of FTTH, a sea change can be expected in the city, he said.