BSNL installs 3,500 4G towers in 5 northern states: CMD Pravin Kumar Purwar

Tower installations to begin in Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh soon

State-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has installed 3,500 base transceiver stations (BTS) across five circles in North India for 4G services, Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) Pravin Kumar Purwar has said. The company will soon begin deploying in Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and other states.

These circles are Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh West. A BTS is a fixed radio transceiver in any mobile network, most often in the form of a tower.

Speaking on the sidelines of an industry event here, Purwar said the telecom company remained on target to launch commercial 4G services as soon as operationally possible. This might be after 20,000 base transceiver stations (BTS) go live, he indicated.

Apart from the northern states, the company has chosen Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana to be the first areas to receive 4G services, BSNL officials have told Business Standard. While Tamil Nadu is expected to see 4G rollout after April, tower installations are underway across more than 4,200 4G sites in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

The company has mapped out large parts of these states for tower installation, and the exercise is underway, they said.

Late rollout
 

BSNL’s plans to launch 4G services years after three private telecom service providers — Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea — rolled it out have repeatedly been delayed. As a result, BSNL’s customer base constantly shrunk as 2G users migrating to 4G choose other operators. BSNL’s mobile services market share stood at 7.94 per cent as of December 31, 2023.

Last year, the BSNL board and later a group of ministers had cleared a Rs 24,500 crore contract to a TCS-led consortium, which includes CDOT and Tejas Networks, a contract to provide 4G equipment for 100,000 new telecom towers. Network gear for about Rs 13,000 crore, as well as third-party items and a 10-year annual maintenance contract (AMC) is also covered in the contract.

Subsequently, BSNL officials had earlier insisted December 2023, and later June 2024 could be kept as operational challenges were being quickly cleared.

In June last year, the company issued an advance purchase order of around Rs 19,000 crore to TCS and government-run ITI Limited for the same. The company has begun offering free 4G SIM upgrades to its users in select circles. The upgrade from a 2G/3G SIM will also provide users with 4G GB of complimentary 4G data with three months of validity.

However, the BSNL management has now told the employees that delay by TCS in delivering the equipment has made the timeline difficult to adhere to.

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5G plans
 

The company plans to quickly upgrade 4G services into 5G by June 2024. BSNL may begin advanced testing of 5G network equipment by February 2024, Business Standard had earlier reported. The Centre for Development of Telematics (CDOT) is working to ensure this.

The government first announced a Rs 69,000-crore revival package for BSNL and MTNL in October 2019. In 2022, it approved a second revival package for BSNL and MTNL amounting to Rs 1.64 trillion. The move led to BSNL’s authorised capital increasing to Rs 2.1 trillion, up from Rs 1.5 trillion. The Cabinet also approved allotting 4G and 5G spectrum for the company through equity infusion.

In June 2023, the Cabinet granted BSNL Rs 89,047 crore as part of a third revival package. As a result of these efforts, the telecom firm has started earning operating profits since FY22. Its total debt has reduced from Rs 32,944 crore to Rs 22,289 crore.