New Delhi. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL)’s revenue has grown by nearly 19 per cent in the last two years from Rs 21,000 crore to Rs 25,000 crore, while the company’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of intangible assets (EBITDA) has increased from Rs 50 crore to nearly Rs 7,000 crore.
Minister of State for Communications and Rural Development, Dr. Chandrashekhar Pemmasani said in an event that due to indigenous 4G technology, towers and rural connectivity expansion, BSNL has registered major improvement at the financial and operational level.
BSNL has systematically addressed problems like work culture, condition of towers and aging infrastructure. The company adopted accountability and target based methodology like private sector, which has yielded positive results.
The Minister of State said that earlier the tower uptime in states like Andhra Pradesh was only 75 percent, which was targeted to be increased to 95 percent.
For this, batteries in 50,000 towers were replaced, power plants were upgraded and old cables were replaced. Also, targets for new mobile connections and enterprise business were set at each circle and state level.
He said that BSNL has launched indigenous 4G technology on one lakh towers within a year. India has now joined the five countries in the world to have developed deep indigenous 4G technology.
Dr. Pemmasani said that to win back the trust of the people, BSNL is providing services at cheaper rates than private companies. SIM cards worth Rs 1 are being made available through post offices and in rural areas information about BSNL services is being given door to door through India Post.
He said that about 35,000 villages in the country were deprived of telecom services for a long time. About 25,000 towers have been installed so far and work on 10,000 more towers is underway.
He said that due to the installation of BSNL towers in areas like Narayanpur of Chhattisgarh, people are able to contact the police and administration faster, which has helped in improving the situation in the leftist extremism affected areas.
The Minister of State said that under the BharatNet project, about Rs 1.40 lakh crore is being invested to provide high speed fiber network to Gram Panchayats. At present about 15 lakh rural houses are connected and a target has been set to provide connectivity to 1.5 crore houses in the first phase.
Dr. Pemmasani said that communication infrastructure will play an important role in achieving the goal of a developed India by the year 2047. He said the aim is to make BSNL a “trusted, proud and profitable” company in the next five years.
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