Telephones in Calcutta: A glorious past…….

In India, Telecom service was first started in Kolkata in Jan 1882, just six years after invention of telephone by A. G. Bell.

Calcutta Telephones District (CTD) plays a vital role to provide telecommunication services (Voice and non-Voice) in the city of Kolkata and adjoining areas of five districts of West Bengal viz. Howrah, Hooghly, Nadia, North 24-Parganas and South 24-Parganas. It serves the population of about 1.3 crores spreading over the area of about 2200 Sq. Km, along the both sides of the Ganges.

     The growth of Telephone in Calcutta Telephones:

At the time of independence in 1947, there were 20,000 telephone connections in Kolkata. The figure rose to 5,00,000 by March 1997 and crossed one million by Feb’2000. At present the total connection is more than 12.8 lakh with the Tele-density of 9.5 Today, CTD is the largest metro district of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) erstwhile DOT and third largest in the country after Mumbai and Delhi – both of which are under Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL). Calcutta Telephones is the first city to go completely digital PSTN network in Year 2000.

   Calcutta Telephones has taken as a challenge to provide telephone on demand and bandwidth      on demand. It is continuously modernizing and upgrading the network to provide latest telecom      facilities of international standard at affordable price to the customers.  

  Network: One of the finest network…

CTD has deployed a very stable PSTN network having 4 Tandems as backbone and 32 Main switches. All the 32 digital exchanges are connected by 5 nos. of high capacity and highly reliable OFC STM-16 rings. This arrangement is made to ensure the diversion of traffic in case of any damage to the fibre in any segment.

Calcutta Telephones is the first to introduce the Local Network Management Centre in 1998. The system continuously monitors the exchange status on real time basis for effective utilisation of the network.

Calcutta Telephones has 3 high capacity Digital Trunk Automatic Exchanges (TAX) with highly reliable optical fibre links to other parts of the country to support STD/ISD facility.

Calcutta Telephones is the first to introduce the pair view system in 1998. The system is employed to give the full details of the unutilised and lost cable pairs of under ground cables for efficiency in cable pair utilisation.

  ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) :

Services are available all over the CTD area from the state-of-art exchanges. Facilities like digital telephony, video conferencing, high-speed data transfer and FAX facility are available to ISDN customers on a single line from the Exchanges. Simultaneously two services can be availed on one ISDN line.

Calling Line Identification Presentation (CLIP) facility is available in all the exchanges in Calcutta Telephones on demand.

  Centrex Facility :

Centrex facility can be given to subscribers having lines from New Technology switches.  The subscribers can get the facility of virtual PBX facility at low cost.

One CDTMX (Computerized Digital Trunk Manual Exchanges) is operational in Kolkata to support trunk facilities. In addition, IVRS based Trunk Call Handling System has been introduced for automatic trunk booking facility.This service is unique in India.

  Leased Line Service :

Calcutta Telephones provides dedicated leased line service for private and corporate clients for voice and data applications. The speed of access varies from low speed from 9.6 Kbps to high speed 64 Kbps, 2 Mbps, 8 Mbps, 34 Mbps, 140 mbps and more depending on the customer requirements.

Managed Leased Line (MLLN) : Managed Leased Line Network provides efficient way of utilising the bandwidth. The system has already been installed and commissioned in Calcutta Telephones network. With installation of MLLN the network manageability is achieved. No modem is required for the leased line provided through MLLN.

Inet :  Apart from that Calcutta Telephones provides Data circuits on a national basis covering more than 100 cities in India on Inet platform employing PSPDN which provides FR / X.25 / X.28 leased lines of speed up to 64 Kbps.

Broad Band service  :  STM-16 ring based core network supported by STM-4 / STM-1 access rings connecting important buildings provides instant provisioning of bandwidth for both point to point leased circuits as well as high speed Internet access.

Fibre to the building  Fibre to the Building is provided for the premium subscribers. There are plans to install Fibre based DLC in commercial buildings and in the commercial areas where customers are demanding more and more bandwidth for leased circuit.

 Value Added Services :

Calcutta Telephones offers hosts of value added services (VAS) such as IN service, Internet service, etc.

  IN (Intelligent Network) :

Calcutta Telephones is first City to install the Service Control Point (SCP) of the Intelligent Network (IN) of erstwhile DOT (Now BSNL) in Dec’1998. The service can be availed in 260 cities in India at present. More and more cities are being added to the network. The services are getting popular day by day. One of the most popular services is VCC, which is promoted under the brand name of India Telephone Card (ITC).

 Internet :

Internet services are provided on National Internet Backbone (NIB) platform by BSNL at present. National Internet Backbone is a structured network with redundancy and having six numbers of 34 Mbps International Highways through VSNL. Calcutta Telephone has introduced the Leased Line Internet service since May’2001. The leased line Internet service is speed ranging from 64Kbps  to 2Mbps is provided currently

DIAS :

Calcutta Telephones plans to provide Internet to the Housing Complex by Leased Internet or by DIAS (Direct Internet Access System.) This system will provide voice as well as Internet accesses on the same access line simultaneously.

 Wireless in Local Loop (WLL) :

WLL service has been launched on 25/12/2001 with 16 BTSs having capacity 11.5K to cover entire area under the jurisdiction of Calcutta Telephones network. FWT(Fixed wireless Terminal) of WLL system are provided for telephone connections at the fringe areas where it is difficult to lay the cables for new connections. The Hand Held instrument of WLL looks like a mobile handset can be used as a mobile telephone within the area covered by CTD at the cost of ordinary telephone.

 Cellular Mobile Service :

Cellular Mobile Services of BSNL known as Indian Mobile Personal Communications (IMPCS) has already been launched on 23^rd Nov’2001. This system has been developed by C-DOT. There are 66 BTS to cover all the areas of Calcutta Telephones.

  New Projects:

  Voice Over IP :

The VOIP network is under commissioning at Kolkata. VOIP network will connect Six cities viz., Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad to optimise the E1 links between TAXs. This is a Pilot Project for BSNL. The project is aim at carrying the voice traffic on test basis over VOIP before the actual deployment in the network

  Voice Mail Service (VMS) :

VMS is a computer-based system that will have the ability to record, send and process voice messages for telephone subscribers. Each voice mail subscriber will have a personal mailbox for storing the message and data. The valuable messages can be retrieved from the  voice mail at convenient time by the subscriber. We have planned to introduce Voice Mail Service very soon in Calcutta Telephones.

  Care for city citizens while laying cables :

Micro-Tunneling : Calcutta Telephones had introduced cable laying by trench-less method with the introduction of Micro-Tunneling equipment.  In this method the roads are not damaged while laying cable or fibre and no inconvenience caused  to the local people. With this system standard depth of cable laid is maintained .

  Care for customers :

Utility Services : Acknowledging the necessity of customer comfort and care, Calcutta Telephones has already started a variety of computerized facilities such Computerized Commercial system, Computerized Billing system, Computerized Fault handling system, Computerized bill enquiry service (1501, 1502, 1503 service) and Computerized Changed Number Announcement system. Majority of the systems are equipped with Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) to communicate with the subscribers .

Besides telephone reconnection service (151 service), for the telephones disconnected for non-payment, billing complaint service (152 service) were introduced. Billing related complaints can also be lodged at our website.

A variety of bill payment systems have been introduced such as bill payment through Customer Service Centres, Post Offices, Departmental Telegraph Offices and branches of Syndicate Bank. Bill presentation over Internet is available in CTD Website. Bill payment through Internet has been introduced in collaboration with M/s BillJunction. The Website of Calcutta Telephones also provides a state-of-the-art directory enquiry system . Directory is also available in CD. The Integrated approach of Call Centre will be launched in CTD, where all types of customer services will be available under single roof. Call centre will provide information related to fault, new connection, shift, billing, tariff, new services, leased circuits and also additional information from Internet

 Web site :

    Calcutta Telephones has introduced Directory Enquiry Service through Internet and by      browsing     our site  i.e. www.calcuttatelephones.com anybody can search any number      by inserting name /     address and vice-versa. This is very useful to our esteemed      customer. Besides the following     services are also available in our web site. :

  Information about all types of Services provided by CTD

 Information of latest  communication services.

  Application form  for New Telephone Connection, Telephone Shift, Name Transfer, ECS,     Mobile,WLL, Internet Leased Line etc.

  Bill Presentation,

  Tariff of all services i.e. Mobile, WLL, ISDN etc.

  Information about Latest achievements,

  Tender notices,

  On line billing complaints

  Information about our Tariff

  General Information and other important links.

  New Efforts in customer care :

  The concept of Accounts manager has been introduced to take care of the     telecommunication needs of Important subscribers. Officers of different levels (from GMs     to DEs) have been assigned to a group of premium customers to take care of their various     needs and demands.

  Premium customer meets are organized to have an informal dialogue with them to     understand their requirements, suggestions etc., to improve the service further.