The Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) is a government owned telecom provider in the cities of Delhi and Mumbai in India.

Where private operators like Reliance and Tata Indicom provide you with a new connection within hours, the speed of getting a new connection from MTNL depends solely on the persistence of your follow-ups and your willingness to pay baksheesh. And yes, you need to find time and personally go to your local telephone exchange as MTNL Customer Service Department DOES NOT entertain any letters or telephone calls!

Then, why do people still take MTNL connections when there are now private telecom companies in the Indian market? Here is the reason…

While telecom sector in India has been thrown open to private service providers since 2000, MTNL still retains its dominion over the toll-free and short digit numbers. These toll-free numbers are widely used by useful services like airports, railways, hospitals, customer service canters, calling cards etc. Unfortunately, the private telecom subscribers get access to only a fraction of the Indian telephone network.

True competition among the private operators and this highly inefficient age-old monster is only possible when everyone in the telecom sector can get a level playing field.

My personal saga with MTNL

I applied for a MTNL landline and paid the installation charges at my local telephone exchange. The customer service representative issued me a work order & promised that the new line will be installed in one week maximum (the average delay being 3-4 days).

Despite my persistent follow-ups through the telephone and through e-mails, nothing was materializing. Days were changing to weeks and weeks to months. One fine morning, I finally decided to visit my local exchange and get hold of the local lineman. The lineman requested baksheesh for his services. Having clearly observed the functioning of MTNL where the customer is least important in their eyes and no one assumes any responsibility, I felt that this was the only way out if I was to ever get a MTNL landline at my place. So, the deal was struck and after 2 LONG MONTHS, the landline was finally installed at my place!

Now, what?… I applied for MTNL Triband Internet in December’05 as it provides good connection speeds at a reasonable price. Despite my persistent follow ups, sending a follow-up letter and many e-mails to the Triband department, I have still not got the connection after 4 LONG MONTHS. MTNL customer service department has not even bothered to reply to any of my e-mails or the letter sent through post. When you call the grievance department, they keep on bouncing you from one person to another and giving you new telephone numbers to call!

As always, MTNL Customer Department had promised a maximum delay of 10 days while booking this connection. So again, I went to the telephone exchange where I was informed that my Triband connection was not installed because I had cancelled my connection! (Surprisingly, I myself didn’t know about it!)

So, here I am back to square one with MTNL. I again filled up a Triband request form and submitted it to the local exchange on 8th April. It has been about 20 days since my re-request and I AM STILL WAITING.

When will this eternal wait end? Only the nightmarish MTNL knows.

Also Read: Deep’s experience with MTNL