Act professionally with competitive attitude : Ravi Shankar Prasad to BSNL, MTNL

Telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad took charge of the ministry on Monday and among the first thing he did to revive BSNL and MTNL is to demand professional and competitive attitude from these two PSUs.

He said he is quite serious about reviving the two telcos and do whatever is required. However, he expect reciprocation from the telcos.

"Let my message reach them loud and clear that while I work to revive them, these PSUs should also act professional. They need to show professional as well as competitive attitude," Prasad said while sounding quite serious. "What is needed to act professional, we together can work out, but they have to work on this."

It is a known fact that these two telecom operators, despite ample support from the Government are consistently reporting financial losses and MTNL has even been declared a sick company by the government.

The biggest problem these operators, besides their falling revenues, is their mammoth-size work force. To offer a perspective, BSNL alone has more than double the workforce of Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Jio put together.

The minister, however, said that reviving BSNL and MTNL is one of his top priorities in his second term.

"It is imperative to have a PSU operator to maintain a healthy equilibrium in the telecom industry," Prasad said explaining the need for such revival. "It is also in the national interest that PSU telcos remain in force."

Prasad was addressing the media just after taking charge of the ministry when he made the above statement. Besides, he also talked about some of his other priorities for the industry that include develop 5 lakh WiFi hotspots, to set up one lakh digital villages in the country, 5G trial and spectrum auction for 5G.