RTI Against Poor Services of BSNL in Paddar

India is going digital and it is happening at a very rapid speed. Several technological advancements have become a part of our life. One of the most important of them all which is directly affecting our day to day life is in the form of Internet. 4G is launched Pan India with dirt cheap data plans. It has come to us as a free service in the form of JIO. With demonetisation and Digital India Programmes, Prime Minister Mr. Modi has taken a big leap in changing India from an informal to formal economy. India is officially headed to a cashless state and in order to achieve this dream we need to have internet connectivity to perform digital transactions.

Now, the state of affairs in regard to our Paddar area are not looking bright at all. We are literally not moving even at a snail’s pace. All thanks to BSNL services in the area. The successive governments are not bothered to pay any heed to the mobile connectivity problem. I decided to file an RTI to get answers for what was happening at their side. Here are the 8 questions I asked :-

1. When did the mobile towers start functioning in Paddar?
2. For how many days in an year, each tower has blacked out or remained out of order since the mobile towers became functional in all these years till Dec 2015?
3. What is the annual call drop rate since its inception till Dec 2015?
4. What is the annual data usage from these towers since its inception till Dec 2015?
5. How much traffic or number of connections can these towers handle at a time?
6. What is the annual revenue earned from both these towers since its inception till Dec 2015?
7. Why is BSNL broadband not functioning here despite a telephone exchange here in Paddar?
8. Do you have any plans to upgrade or increase the towers to offer basic uninterrupted 2G connectivity?

After 59 days the BSNL decided to respond and they skipped a lot of questions which I think they were not very comfortable to answer. So BSNL replied to only 2 questions. Here are the replies below:-

• Mobile services started functioning in August 2009
• At present Atholi Exchange is working on IDR (Intermediate Data Rate) having 1 PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) for exchange. Due to transmission media constraints Broadband services cannot be started till IDR is upgraded.

The reason for not replying to other queries was rule 8(d) of RTI act 2005 which BSNL replies as “the information that i sought has been exempted from disclosure”.

The question to ask is why are we the people of Paddar not entitled or made a part of the digital boom that the whole country is proud of? India has moved from 2G to 4G since August 2009 and Paddar has not made an iota of progress in the Telecom Sector and there is no sign of Digital India anywhere in the entire Sub-Division.

Kindly share this post if you want Paddar to be a part of PM Modi’s Digital India and are concerned that internet services be started at the earliest. Give your valuable comments below.