Tech Shout!

Mobile phone service provider Airtel, has introduced Airtel PCO services in MSRTC Buses (Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation), thereby becoming the first-ever service provider to offer this service across Maharashtra, India.

For this initiative, Airtel has joined hands with MSRTC to offer the Airtel prepaid PCO service in more than 4500 MSRTC long distance and medium-long distances buses. MSRTC bus commuters in Maharashtra can make Local and STD calls while on the move at just Re. 1. The local calls will be charged at Re. 1 for 60 seconds and STD calls at Re. 1 per 20 seconds across the state.

Speaking on the initiative, Mandeep Bhatia, COO (Mobile Services), Bharti Airtel Limited, said, “Airtel MSRTC tie-up is a testimony of Airtel’s network leadership that spans across cities, small towns, villages and key tourists & pilgrimage destinations along with key national and state highways. The Airtel MSRTC PCO service alliance is a logical step to ride over Airtel’s superior network width in the state and testifies our commitment to offer customer centric services to the people in Maharashtra.”

Sudhakar Paricharak, MLA, Chairman, MSRTC, maintained, “MSRTC has always endeavored to provide better facilities to its passengers. Taking advantage of the recent revolution in the field of communication, MSRTC in collaboration with Airtel is now launching telephone facility in its 4000 odd buses to facilitate communication for its passengers. This added facility will definitely be MSRTC’s one more step towards modernization.”

Madhukar Kokate, IAS, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, MSRTC, said, “MSRTC in a tie-up with Airtel has launched this PCO facility for a period of two years in its over 4000 buses plying on medium and long distance routes. Depending upon the response of the passengers, this facility will be extended to other buses on other routes as well.”

At present, over 1000 PCO’s have been installed in the MSRTC buses. The entire installations would be completed by last week of May 07. The PCO installations would be undertaken across 248 MSRTC Bus Depots spread over, six regions that would cover 30 major cities including Pune, Mumbai, Nasik, Amravati, Aurangabad and Nagpur and close to 218 towns in Maharashtra.

The Airtel PCO is a GSM based phone and will work on prepaid platform. MSRTC will be responsible for the entire cash management for the PCO operation in their buses, while the maintenance cost of the PCOs will be taken care of by Airtel.