An upgrade to its billing infrastructure threw thousands of subscribers of Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited's Internet service out of gear as they were unable to access their accounts for an entire day, starting Sunday, June 29, evening.

VSNL has embarked on a major overhaul of its infrastructure by implementing a 'Consolidated Central Billing and Authentication Platform'.

But during the process, many users could not access their dial-up accounts on almost all servers, for nearly a whole day, starting Sunday, June 29, evening.

VSNL officials, however, said that all users had been sent an e-mail notifying them about the planned upgrade and the likely disruption in services.

VSNL is one of India's largest ISPs and has a subscriber base of around 7.4 lakh (740,000).

Through the upgrade, a section of the existing customers could connect and surf the Net. However, with a view to effectively migrating subscribers on to the new system, VSNL had restricted the system from accepting new registrations, renewals or change in password, temporarily.

"Starting 9.30 a.m. on June 30, VSNL's new / renewal customers too have been able to seamlessly register directly into the new billing platform," the company said in a statement.

Despite the few hiccups that the new billing platform caused, it is expected to give customers a host of benefits.

VSNL claims that the new billing platform is the country's first fully convergent billing system and will greatly benefit customers who will ultimately use VSNL's various services, including the soon to be launched ones like calling cards or Voice-over-IP.

Customers can now see the denomination of the value (in rupees) left in his account card at any given point in time. They can also utilize the amount in the card for other services offered by VSNL.

For instance, if the customer wants an additional e-mail ID, it can be obtained against a debit of the applicable amount to his account.

The customer can also redeem his number of dial-up hours against talk time of VSNL's VoIP services, when it is launched.

All of this has been possible because of the new billing system that seamlessly integrates across VSNL's various services.