MTNL to offer phone, broadband, cable on one line

Faced with the challenge of retaining subscribers, state-owned MTNL is launching a 3-in-1 service, offering voice, broadband and cable TV on a single line while assuring affordability to its customers.

"We have already procured equipment and installation is on. We are planning to launch this service in November. Our subscribers would be able to get all three -- voice telephony, broadband and cable TV along with video-on-demand on single telephpone line," MTNL's CMD R S P Sinha said.

Asked about the charges for all these services, Sinha declined to give figures saying these were yet to be finalised but assured affordability.

"We shall be re-writing and repositioning MTNL with the launch of this service called TriplePlay," Sinha said.

MTNL has already tied up with about 25 TV channels, including AajTak, BBC and some other regional channels which are free-to-air, and the company is in negotiations with other channels for similar agreements, Sinha said. MTNL is planning to offer at least 200 channels in all.

Sinha said MTNL has a lot more to offer to its subscribers and the company was planning a series of such offers in the months to come.

Claiming to have 40,000 broadband subscribers, MTNL has a capacity to add 500,000 customers and is planning to enhance the capacity to 1.5 million next year.

For video-on-demand, Sinha said the company was talking to various content providers and a decision would be taken soon on all these matters to launch the services in November.

For video-on-demand, Sinha said, there would be nominal charges and these would be billed into a consolidated bill.

MTNL is also planning to talk to distributors to have premier shows of new films depending upon the demand and subscribers' ability to pay.

On assured demand from subscribers MTNL would tie-up for showing premiers of new releases.

To offer TriplePlay, MTNL had placed orders for Multi-Protocol Playing Label Switches with the Sterlite-Huawei consortium for about Rs 53 crore (Rs 530 million).

Sinha said all these schemes and new initiatives would yield the results after 8-10 months once they get stabilised.