Newindpress

Bangalore, Feb 21: If you have a BSNL landline telephone connection with an average monthly bill of Rs 1500 or more, then you are entitled to a second telephone, free of cost.

The BSNL has come up with this mother-of-all freebies. All BSNL customers who have opted for Super (Rs 1450 monthly rental) and Premium (Rs 2450 monthly rental) will automatically become eligible for this, as the scheme does not exclude taxes.

As for general customers, the BSNL will go by the average bill amount paid during the last six months to see if the average bill is Rs 1500 or more. Besides getting a telephone instrument free of cost, the BSNL customers will also save on security deposit and installation charges.

The BSNL officials, however, clarified to this newspaper that the second telephone connection (bfone) will not come with any free calls. The outgoing calls will be charged at Re 1.20 per call.

If the customers wished, they can use the second bfone to receive only incoming calls and can have the outgoing call facility barred.

The officials said that the scheme is more than a month old, but the response from the customers has been poor. This, they believe, is due to lack of publicity to the scheme.

The BSNL, they said, have plans to write to customers whose average monthly bill is Rs 1500 or more, thank them for their continued patronage and offer them the additional bfone.

The eligible customers, they said, need not wait for a letter from BSNL officials and can walk into the customer service centre concerned and claim the additional phone.

In case a customer gets an average monthly bill of less than Rs 1500 for a period of six months, the BSNL will charge fixed rentals as under the Sulabh plan or the phone will be disconnected after completion of one year as per the customer's desire.

The scheme is also applicable to the Centrex facility on rent-free Sulabh connection in case the first phone is already covered under the Centrex facility.