How to register and pay bills in Chennai Telephones new BSNL CDR Portal

Chennai Telephones so far was successful in hosting a good online payment site at http://billchn.bsnl.co.in. But suddenly, it has scrapped its website and has migrated to the new BSNL CDR Portal.

The new website is far too inferior to the old BSNL site at billchn.bsnl.co.in. BSNL and a quality website always doesn’t go with each other. BSNL has a horrendous run in website maintenance and hosting so far and this new portal is also no exception. But for many people paying telephone bills online had been the lifesaver instead of leaving their daily jobs and slogging in long queues to pay a telephone bill.

So,  with the old site  shut down since 23rd Jan , 2011, how do we pay bills online?  As expected, BSNL just did little to help people in migrating to the new system and portal. All it did was to send a mail with a dummy username and password for the old customers with no account mapped.

So, here is a tutorial how I managed  to register in the new CDR portal.Follow the steps below:

Step 1:Registration

Has BSNL sent you any username or password through mail? If yes, you don’t have to create any account. You can use the same login credentials and log into the site.

If no, no problem. You can still create an account.

1) Open  http://portal.bsnl.in in your browser and Click on New User? Sign Up 

2)  Fill in the required fields  and also by  choosing your desired username and password and click Submit.

3) Now, go to http://portal.bsnl.in/portal/aspxfiles/login.aspx and login with your selected username and password.

Step 2:Add your Telephone Account

Each and every telephone/Landline number has a unique 10-digit account number. Chennai Telephones has never printed any account number in its bill so far. So, you need to contact Customer Care/1500 or some one in your exchange to know the account number for your phone number.

Once the account number is known, enter the number  along with your circle and telephone details as shown below. If the details are correct and match you will get a message indicating the accounts are added to your username.

The account details will be shown and  reflected  in your profile only after 24 hours or the next day of your registration.

Step 3:Verify your profile and details

Log in to your account  after 24 hours if your telephone number and account is reflected and mapped successfully as shown below.

I must say that I would prefer the old site to the new portal as the old site was more stable,clear and legible . Hope BSNL pays more attention to its websites and design in the future.

UPDATE:

BSNL must have been facing many calls as to how to find the account number for BSNL CDR Portal registration that it has updated its old billing site with the CDR account number and user id.

Users registered in billchn.bsnl.co.in can login with their old password to get their CDR account number and id for registration.

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