BSNL upgrades landline broadband speed to 2 Mbps

BSNL rural broadband
Telecom service provider BSNLhas decided to upgrade landline broadband speed to minimum 2 Mbps at no additional cost for all the broadband customers on pan-India basis from October 1.

A recent TRAI report said BSNL has 9.91 million broadband subscribers, Bharti Airtel 1.47 million, MTNL 1.13 million, Atria Convergence Technologies 0.72 million and YOU Broadband 0.46 million.

BSNL is also offering 1 GB free e-mail box to their customers from 50 MB mail box.

The speed upgradation will benefit all the existing and new broadband customers of BSNL. Under this scheme, BSNL is upgrading the speed of existing broadband plans of 512 Kbps and 1 Mbps to 2 Mbps speed, a BSNL statement said.

BSNL launched the broadband services over its landline in India in 2005 with speed of 256kbps and above over the state of art multi protocol label switching (MPLS) based IP infrastructure in urban as well as rural areas.

Recently, BSNL announed free night calling from BSNL landline  to all operator network from 9:00 PM to 7:00 AM.

BSNL offers broadband services with various plans ranging from 2 mbps to 100 mbps speed using ADSL/VDSL and fiber based GPON technology. BSNL has around 10 million broadband customers including about 1.1 million rural customers.

“This u-gradation shall enhance customer experience while surfing on internet and enjoying live video streaming by all customers even in the low price range. This scheme is expected to attract new customers for subscribing BSNL Broadband customers in an affordable manner,” the statement added.

It’s not known whether rival Bharti Airtel, the second largest wireline broadband provider in India, will follow suit.

The entry of Bharti Airtel 4G in 300 plus towns has already started impacting the business of BSNL broadband. Offering 4G at 3G prices has boosted the Airtel LTE business in select towns.

It is expected that the wide-spread Airtel 4G will propel Bharti Airtel to add more market share in the wireless broadband segment. At present, Bharti Airtel has 23.09 million wireless broadband subscribers, Vodafone 22.07 million, Idea Cellular 16.67 million, Reliance Communications 9.63 million and BSNL 8.29 million.

The increase in the broadband speed is expected to encourage more subscribers to utilize wired Internet. Recent TRAI data said the number of broadband subscribers increased 3.71 percent from 104.96 million in May 2015 to 108.85 million in June 2015.

BSNL has more than 77 million mobile customers, more than 16 million wired line telephone connections and around 10 million wired broadband connections.

Baburajan K
[email protected]