12,000 4G sites up, BSNL targets nationwide 4G rollout by year-end

4G sites up in all metro cities & most state capitals, 5G service by early-2025

State-owned telecom operator BSNL has installed nearly 12,000 4G towers and aims to begin nationwide 4G services by 2024-end, and 5G services by early next year, officials said.

“4G sites are up in all 4-metro cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. Sites are also active in most of the state capitals including Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Raipur, and Chandigarh,” a senior BSNL official said.

The telco is also trying to convert the majority of existing base transceiver stations (BTS) in hill states such as Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and those in North East-India into 4G capable ones, by the September-end, he added.

 

“This would be one year since we received the 4G equipment in September, 2023,” he stressed. A BTS is a fixed radio transceiver in any mobile network, most often in the form of a tower.

As of March-end, BSNL had 67,340 towers nationwide, and had leased out 12,502 towers to private telecom operators, the government informed Parliament on Wednesday.

The telco is working on simultaneously preparing the infra for 5G-services rollout, which is targeted for early-2025, another official said.

“A faster pace of deployment is expected since the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has formed a project monitoring unit for BSNL chaired by the Telecom Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia and Telecom Secretary Neeraj Mittal,” he added.

 

Long Time coming

BSNL’s plans to launch 4G services years after the three private telecom service providers — Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea — rolled it out, have repeatedly been delayed. It’s customer base has shrunk to 86.32 million, while market share has reduced to 7.4 per cent as of May-end, as 2G users migrating to 4G choose other operators.

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.

 

5G plans

The company had initially planned to upgrade 4G services into 5G by June 2024. After receiving 5G network equipment from the Centre for Development of Telematics (CDOT), BSNL has begun its testing, the official said.

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 the telco Rs 89,047 crore as part of a third revival package.

Earlier this week, Budget 2024 (for FY 2024-25) allocated Rs 82,916 crore for BSNL, the same as had been made in the interim budget. The majority of this would go towards funding BSNL’s network expansion plans, and pay for the equipment, officials said.

As a result of previous capital infusion efforts, the telco’s Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation or EBITDA (EBITDA) rose to Rs 2,164 crore in FY24, up from Rs 1,559 crores and Rs 944 crores in the preceding 2-years.

While it remains a loss making entity, net losses narrowed to Rs 5,371 crore in FY24, the lowest in the past six years. The telco had logged net losses of Rs 8,161 crore, Rs 6,982 andRs 7,441 crore in the preceding three-years.