It’s the end of an era. The last telegram — popularly called taar that was once loved and feared as the bearer of good and bad news — will be sent on July 15. After that, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has decided to discontinue the service which started the Indian telecom revolution in 1850.
With SMSs, emails, fax and smart phones rendering the telegram redundant in past few years, struggling-to-survive BSNL that is expected to notch up losses of over Rs.17,000 crore in past two fiscals can no longer afford the luxury of continuing to provide this service.
This, despite taking two last ditch attempts being made in recent past to ensure that the 163-year old legacy lives on. The state-run utility had raised telegraph charges in 2011 — after a gap of 60 years — when telegraphing 50 words within the country was priced at Rs 50 instead of Rs 4 earlier.
But with increasingly few takers, this price hike could not make the service viable for the loss-making PSU. Two months back, it had discontinued international telegrams.
After all this tinkering did not help, BSNL asked the government to support the commercially unviable product but was instead told to take a closer look at if it was still needed in today’s world and decide its fate. Then after consultation with the department of post, BSNL decided to discontinue this service with a circular being issued by its senior GM (telegraph services) Shameem Akhtar. The telegraph staff is now going to be shifted to the British era taar’s modern day successors like mobile services, landline telephony, and broadband services
With SMSs, emails, fax and smart phones rendering the telegram redundant in past few years, struggling-to-survive BSNL that is expected to notch up losses of over Rs.17,000 crore in past two fiscals can no longer afford the luxury of continuing to provide this service.
This, despite taking two last ditch attempts being made in recent past to ensure that the 163-year old legacy lives on. The state-run utility had raised telegraph charges in 2011 — after a gap of 60 years — when telegraphing 50 words within the country was priced at Rs 50 instead of Rs 4 earlier.
But with increasingly few takers, this price hike could not make the service viable for the loss-making PSU. Two months back, it had discontinued international telegrams.
After all this tinkering did not help, BSNL asked the government to support the commercially unviable product but was instead told to take a closer look at if it was still needed in today’s world and decide its fate. Then after consultation with the department of post, BSNL decided to discontinue this service with a circular being issued by its senior GM (telegraph services) Shameem Akhtar. The telegraph staff is now going to be shifted to the British era taar’s modern day successors like mobile services, landline telephony, and broadband services
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