A parliamentary panel has flagged several financial and planning lapses in Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited‘s (BSNL) scheme to set up 25,000 Wi-Fi hotspots at rural telephone exchanges, saying the state-run telco lost Rs 1.15 crore in operational subsidy and generated a mere Rs 3.09 lakh in revenue against a Rs 75-crore annual target, even as the government’s own auditor had flagged the project for lack of due diligence.
The Committee on Public Undertakings (CoPU), in its report tabled in the Lok Sabha, reviewed the Department of Telecommunications’ (DoT) response to its earlier findings on the scheme, which was originally examined on the basis of a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) audit para from 2023.
Of the 24,333 hotspots BSNL eventually commissioned under the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF)-backed project, 700 went live only after the window for claiming subsidy had closed, and eight were never commissioned at all. That translated into a loss of 108.36 lakh on the delayed sites and a further 6.88 lakh on those that were never switched on, a combined hit of Rs 1.15 crore.
The Committee noted that while DoT and BSNL have introduced digital dashboards, AI-based project monitoring, milestone-linked payments, third-party audits and service-level agreements in newer Digital Bharat Nidhi (DBN) and BharatNet projects, these measures do not adequately address responsibility for past financial losses.
“The response remains limited in addressing the need for a structured internal review of the lapses that led to the loss of OPEX subsidy amounting to Rs 1.15 crore,” the Committee said, urging BSNL to institute a time-bound accountability framework with clearly defined responsibilities and periodic reviews.
The panel, headed by Baijayant Jay Panda, BJP MP and Chairperson of CoPU, also highlighted the project’s weak commercial performance. Against a projected revenue target of 75 crore for 2018-19, BSNL generated only 3.09 lakh between 2017-18 and 2021-22. The Committee attributed the poor outcome to prolonged free Wi-Fi services beyond the approved trial period, inadequate market assessment and failure to convert users into paying subscribers.
The Ministry, however, argued that subsequent programmes have shifted towards commercially sustainable models through BharatNet-based Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) connections under postpaid billing, customer retention incentives and greater participation by local BharatNet Udyamis.
The panel has reiterated that BSNL needs to institutionalise mechanisms to fix responsibility for financial and operational lapses, set measurable performance benchmarks and periodically report outcomes, signalling Parliament’s intent to ensure future taxpayer-funded telecom infrastructure projects are driven by commercial viability, transparent governance and effective execution rather than post-facto corrective action.