Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Communication & IT, today said BSNL will install 25,645 telecom sites for an investment outlay of Rs 4,800 crore.

The main development highlighted by the telecom minister is the fact that BSNL revenue grew 2.1 percent in 2014-15. In the last 3-4 years, BSNL reported negative growth in annual revenue due to competition from companies such as Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone, etc. and lack of expansion plans.

The state-run telecom service provider added 47 lakh active subscribers, and MTNL added 2.11 lakh subscribers in 2014-15.
BSNL is in the process of setting up 25,645 new base transceiver stations (BTSs) in Phase-VII of its expansion plan at a cost of Rs 4,805 crore, its first such investment plan in over five years. BSNL installed 15,000 BTSs in the last one year.

BSNL is replacing network of landline local exchanges by Internet Protocol enabled Next Generation Network. The company will replace 432 telephone exchanges and 70 lakh telephone lines.

Meanwhile, MTNL is setting up or upgrading 1,080 3G sites in Delhi and Mumbai each. MTNL will also be setting up or upgrading 850 2G sites in Delhi and 616 2G sites in Mumbai.

BSNL and MTNL have launched unlimited free local calls from landlines to any landline/mobile during night hours effective from May 1, 2015.

BSNL is also launching free national roaming. BSNL will be setting up Wi-Fi hotspots at important tourist locations like Varanasi Ghats, Hussain Sagar Lake-Hyderabad, Bangalore, Cochin, Vijayawada etc.

The India government has tried to speed up the work of Bharat Net (National Optical Fibre Network – NOFN) – linking 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats of the country via broadband optical fiber network – by 30 times in the last 10 months.

India’s rural teledensity grew to 48.90 percent, an increase of 4.57 percent in the last 11 months. This is the highest increase in the last three years — 43.18 in March 2014, 41.6 in March 2013 and 39 in March 2012.

The number of broadband connections increased from 65.33 million in May 2014 to 99.20 million in March 2015 with growth of 52 percent in the last 10 months.

The government received foreign direct investment (FDI) $2853 million in the telecom sector in 2014-15 up to February 2015. It was the highest in the last four years — $1307 million in 2013-14, $304 million in 2012-13, $1997 million in 2011-12 and $1665 million in 2010-11.

Baburajan K
[email protected]