A crowded BSNL counter

Oct. 12: For CellOne customers paying mobile bills is about to get ?e-asier?. Instead of queuing up at the crowded CellOne bill payment counters, subscribers will be able to pay their mobile bills at the post offices from early next month.

Negotiations between the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and the postal department are at the final stage and a contract is expected to be signed by the end of this month.

Once the agreement is signed, CellOne subscribers can pay their bills across the counters at nine post offices under the ?e-bill post? scheme of the postal department. A copy of the receipt will be issued to the subscriber and the information will be immediately fed into the BSNL server through the Internet.

Under the new scheme, the postal department will collect the bills on behalf of the BSNL and the public sector telecom giant will pay the department service charges. The postal department already collects bills for BSNL?s landline connections.

Senior superintendent of post offices (Guwahati division) Som Kamei said initially the bills will be accepted at nine computerised post offices. With time, the facility will be extended all over the city.

Post offices where the service is planned to be introduced are Meghdoot Bhawan, Ulubari, Maligaon, Noonmati, Assam Sacivalaya, Gauhati University and Dispur, among others.

The heavy subscriber rush at the Panbazar CTO on October 7 had compelled the BSNL to extend the last date for payment of CellOne bills. Despite opening seven counters at the CTO, there was such a rush that police had to be called in to prevent any untoward incident.

Sources claimed that at one point of time there were nearly 2,000 customers waiting inside the CTO.

The proposed scheme is expected to ease the pressure on the BSNL counters bringing respite to the subscribers who now had to stand in serpentine queues for hours to clear their mobile bills.

The implementation of the Internet-based system will also pre-empt allegations of harassment of customers that have often been raised against the existing manual system.

In recent months, there were several complaints that even after clearing outstanding dues, the BSNL discontinued services.

In most of the cases human error was held responsible for the goof-ups.

Chances of such errors would be reduced in the e-bill post scheme.