Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) plans to provide 4G services in high-revenue earning circles first as the state-owned telecom operator gets closer to the commercial launch. The reason for launch in key circles first is to arrest the subscriber churn and increase the revenue. Currently, among the 30 circles, Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Punjab are some of the high revenue earning circles for BSNL.
“We are witnessing subscriber churn because of the absence of 4G services. The company will issue the purchase order for 100,000 tower sites to the TCS-led consortium in a week,” BSNL CMD P K Purwar told FE in an interaction.As part of the pilot for 4G, BSNL has deployed 200 sites in three districts of Punjab – Ferozepur, Pathankot and Amritsar.
While Purwar did not share the amount of purchase order to be issued to TCS for 4G sites, the estimated cost is pegged at around Rs 24,500 crore. Last week, the group of ministers approved the proof of concept by the TCS consortium for BSNL 4G using indigenous stack and gave the company a go ahead to issue purchase order.”The plan is to prioritise high-revenue circles first for launching 4G. In Kerala, which is the largest circle for BSNL, the subscribers have high purchasing power and therefore they want BSNL to launch 4G and we are on track to provide the services soon,” Purwar said.
While Kerala was the highest revenue generating circle for BSNL in the FY23, it was among the nine circles with which saw a fall in revenue. BSNL’s revenue from Kerala fell nearly 2% to `1,656 crore in FY23. Other circles which witnessed fall in revenue are Karnataka, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Andaman and Nicobar, UP (West), Gujarat, Chennai and Telangana.”We have maintained the overall revenue. In fact, it has grown. Yes, there are some circles in which we have witnessed weakness because of absence of 4G,” Purwar said, adding that the focus of the company is to grow its FTTH (fibre-to-the-home) and enterprise business.”In about six months, there will be a greater focus on the mobile services segment once we start deploying the 4G networks,” Purwar said.
BSNL is yet to declare its results for the January-March quarter and FY23. According to officials, the company’s revenue from operations is expected to grow over 3% in FY23.As of February-end, BSNL’s wireless subscriber base was at 104.09 million, which is the lowest among all four operational telecom operators. In the last 14 months, till February-end, the company lost over 10 million subscribers. The last time the company added subscribers was in December 2021 at 1.18 million .With regard to FTTH, Purwar said the company has been given a target to install 500,000 connections in the rural areas. It has already done 300,000 and in the next six months, the company will deploy 200,000 FTTH connections in the rural areas. The target is to provide 20 million connections in rural areas in the next five years, Purwar said.Similarly, in the urban areas BSNL has installed over 3 million FTTH connections.
According to Trai data, in the FTTH segment, the company currently has 3.54 million subscribers as of February end, compared to Jio and Airtel at 8.02 million and 5.98 million, respectively. BSNL lost its top position in the segment to Jio in November 2021, just within two years of commercial launch of JioFiber.Expressing concern on the falling market share, Purwar, in a meeting with circle heads last month, asked them to find out the reasons behind growing number of disconnections in the FTTH segment.