BSNL to invest Rs 17,000cr in current fiscal

Looking at large-scale expansion in virtually all segments of operations, BSNL today announced an investment of Rs 17,000 crore in the current financial year.

The spend will be to increase GSM, CDMA, brodband services and also in the billing segment.

"Major investment of Rs 6,000 crore has been earmarked for the GSM expansion. About Rs 3,000 crore will be spent for expanding broadband services and similar investment will be made in CDMA base services in various parts of the country," A K Sinha, CMD of BSNL, said here.

Sinha said BSNL would also be investing about Rs 1,000 crore on the Call Data Record (CDR) based billing system.

This allows carriers to quickly process huge volumes of call detail records to help them retrieve vital, detailed information regarding billing, interconnection agreements, Quality of Service, Call Routing Pattern and more.

This type of granular search capability will give providers enhanced visibility into their call traffic patterns and will ultimately help them make better business decision, say experts.

Asked about the source of funding huge investments, Sinha said, "The entire investments would be funded through internal accruals and there is no plan to borrow from the market at this juncture."