Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) will receive an additional Rs 6,000 crore from the Centre to purchase 4G network equipment, which is essential for the long-overdue rollout of the state-run telecom company’s services. The 4G rollout delay has made BSNL’s subscriber attrition worse.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) intends to inject this money to offset the gap in funds for 4G equipment, which is being deployed through a locally produced technological stack, according to the business daily, which cited officials with knowledge of the situation. It is anticipated that the DoT would soon request Cabinet approval for this cash.
In order to build up 100,000 4G sites, BSNL issued an advance purchase order for Rs 19,000 crore last year. The real purchase order, however, was for almost Rs 13,000 crore and was made with the state-owned ITI Ltd and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).
About Rs 3.22 trillion has been invested by the government in BSNL and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) thus far as part of three revival packages that have been started since 2019, one of which is the 4G deployment.
The Centre claims that starting in FY21, these revitalisation packages have allowed BSNL-MTNL to turn a profit.
However, with just about 22,000 base stations offering 4G services, BSNL’s 4G coverage is still less extensive than that of commercial telecom companies. The government has rescheduled its former aim of Diwali 2024 and now expects to complete the deployment of 100,000 4G sites by mid-2025.
Market share decline for BSNL
According to data from the telecom regulator, BSNL’s market share decreased to 7.33 percent as of June 2024 from 10.72 percent in December 2020. In the meantime, Bharti Airtel’s market share climbed to 33.23 percent from 29.24 percent, and Jio’s surged to 40.71 percent from 35.06 percent.
The government had directed BSNL to implement 4G services through a locally created technology stack from the CDoT-TCS consortium, in spite of opposition from several high-ranking business executives who preferred leading global vendors.
One of the reasons for the delays was the requirement to test the local stack before moving forward with the rollout.