Public call office

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A Public call office (PCO) is a telephone facility located in a public place in India and Pakistan. It is also another name in the United Kingdom for a public telephone box (postal addresses for these kiosks sometimes include "PCO").

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[edit] PCO in India

In India, manned and automated (coin operated payphone) versions of the service are in existence. BSNL, a public sector corporation, has the largest installation of PCOs in India. Mr. R. L. Dube, a BSNL officer introduced concept of PCO's in india. As of 2006 there are about 4,199,157 PCOs operating in India, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

Private sector corporations such as Reliance Infocomm, Tata Indicom, Hutch, Idea and Airtel are prepaid PCO providers and have a moderate number of PCOs in the public landscape.

There are two types of PCO landline and wireless. Wireless PCO uses 2 kinds of technology- CDMA and GSM. Reliance and Tata Indicom are CDMA based prepaid PCO connection provider and Airtel, Idea and Hutch are GSM based prepaid PCO connection providers. MTNL, BSNL and Airtel provide fixed landline postpaid PCO connections. MTNL is also planning to come in to prepaid PCO business the kind taking the trend.

[edit] PCO in Pakistan

In Pakistan, PCOs are provided by Pakistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL), Dancom, Worldcall, and Telecard, amongst others. These companies usually provide calling-card-based domestic and international telecom services.

[edit] References

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