Oct. 7: The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), one of the two mobile phone service providers in the city, today extended the last date for payment of bills for its CellOne subscribers by one day.

Though today happened to be the last day for payment of bills, BSNL authorities extended the deadline to tomorrow given the heavy rush of subscribers at the Panbazar Central Telegraph Office (CTO) in spite of the inclement weather.

Panbazar police sent additional personnel to prevent any untoward incident at the CTO, which witnessed never-before rush on a single day. Sources said at least 2,000 BSNL customers were queuing up to pay their bills at one go.

Sources said the police also impressed upon the BSNL authorities to extend the deadline to prevent resentment among the subscribers.

The deadline was first extended by an hour and then to tomorrow, they added.

The Panbazar CTO has seven counters for collecting bill payments.

A BSNL official pointed out that the company has opened bill-collection counters at key localities like Dispur, Maligaon, Ambari, Kahilipara, Noonmati and Ulubari. ?It is strange that people come to the Panbazar CTO to pay their bills despite the presence of bill-collection counters at their respective localities. We have already given advertisements in newspapers and people should reap the benefit of these bill-collection counters,? he said.

Besides the new counters, the BSNL has also introduced an electronic clearance scheme to make payment of bills easier.

As of now, there are nearly 36,000 CellOne subscribers in the city.

With the subscriber base rising, the BSNL has been under tremendous pressure to improve its services. As part of its plans, the BSNL is setting up 15 additional base transmission stations to decongest its CellOne network, launched in February this year. The BSNL already has 20 such stations in the city.

Fed up with congestion, subscribers have even taken the BSNL to court. ?Every time I dial a CellOne number, ?the subscriber is not reachable? is the reply I get from the other side,? a customer said.