Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (known as BSNL, India Communications Corporation Limited) is a public sector telecommunication company in India. It is India's largest telecommunication company with 24% market share as on March 31, 2008. Its headquarters are at Bharat Sanchar Bhawan, Harish Chandra Mathur Lane, Janpath, New Delhi. It has the status of Mini Ratna, a status assigned to reputed public sector companies in India.
BSNL is India's oldest and largest Communication Service Provider (CSP). Currently has a customer base of 90 million as of June 2008.[1] It has footprints throughout India except for the metropolitan cities of Mumbai and New Delhi which are managed by MTNL. As on March 31, 2008 BSNL commanded a customer base of 31.55 million Wireline, 4.58 million CDMA-WLL and 54.21 million GSM Mobile subscribers. BSNL's earnings for the Financial Year ending March 31, 2007 stood at INR 397.15b (US$ 9.67 b) with net profit of INR 78.06b (US$ 1.90 billion). Today, BSNL is India's largest telco and one of the largest public sector undertakings with estimated market value of $ 100 Billion. The company is planning an IPO with in 6 months to offload 10% to public in the Rs 300-400 range valuing the company at over $100 billion.
| |
references
BSNL provides almost every telecom service in India. Following are the main telecom services provided by BSNL:
- Universal Telecom Sevices : Fixed wireline services & Wireless in Local loop (WLL) using CDMA Technology called bfone and Tarang respectively. BSNL is dominant operator in fixed line. As of December 31, 2007, BSNL has 81% marketshare of fixed lines.
- Cellular Mobile Telephone Services: BSNL is major provider of Cellular Mobile Telephone services using GSM platform under the brand name CellOne[2]. Prepaid cellular services of BSNL are know as Excel. As of March 31, 2007 BSNL has 17% share of mobile telephony in the country.
- Internet: BSNL provides internet services through dial-up connection (Sancharnet) as Prepaid, (NetOne) as Postpaid and ADSL broadband (DataOne). BSNL has around 50% market share in broadband in India. BSNL has planned aggressive rollout in broadband for current financial year.
- Intelligent Network (IN): BSNL provides IN services like televoting, toll free calling, premium calling etc.
Administrative units
BSNL is divided into a number of administrative units, termed as telecom circles, metro districts, project circles and specialized units, as mentioned below:
Training Institutions
1. Advanced Level Telecom Training Centre(ALTTC), Ghaziabad
2. Bharat Ratna Bhim Rao Ambedkar Institute Of Telecom Training, Jabalpur
3. National Academy of Telecom Finance and Management, Hyderabad
4. Telecom Factory, Kolkata
5. RTTC Ahmedabad
6. RTTC Trivandrum
7. RTTC Jaipur
8. RTTC Pune
9. RTTC BHUBANESHWAR
10. RTTC CHENNAI
11. RTTC GUWAHATI
12. RTTC HYDERABAD
13. RTTC LUCKNOW
14. RTTC MYSORE
15. RTTC NAGPUR
16. RTTC RAJPURA
Other Units
1. Telecom Stores
2. Telecom Electrical Wing
3. Telecom Civil Wing
4. T & D Circle
Present and future
Since its corporatization in October 2000, BSNL has been actively providing connections in both urban and rural areas and the efficiency of the company has drastically improved from the days when one had to wait for years to get a phone connection to now when one can get a connection in even hours. Pre-activated Mobile connections are available at many places across India. BSNL has also unveiled very cost-effective broadband internet access plans (DataOne) targeted at homes and small businesses. At present BSNL enjoy's around 60% of market share of ISP services.[3]
2007 has been declared as "Year of Broadband" in India and BSNL is in the process of providing 5 million Broadband connectivity by the end of 2007. BSNL has upgraded existing Dataone (Broadband) connections for a speed of up to 2 Mbit/s without any extra cost. This 2 Mbit/s broadband service is being provided by BSNL at a cost of just US$ 11.7 per month (as of 21/07/2008 and at a limit of 2.5GB monthly limit with 0200-0800 hrs as no charge period). Further, BSNL is rolling out new broadband services such as triple play.
BSNL is planning to increase its customer base to 108 million customers by 2010. With the frantic activity in the communication sector in India, the target appears achievable.
BSNL is a pioneer of rural telephony in India. BSNL has recently bagged 80% of US$ 580 m (INR 2,500 crores) Rural Telephony project of Government of India.[4]
Challenges
During the financial year 2006-2007 (from April 1, 2006 to March 31, 2007) BSNL has added 9.6 million new customers in various telephone services taking its customer base to 64.8 million. BSNL's nearest competitor Bharti Airtel is standing at a customer base of 39 million. However, despite impressive growth shown by BSNL in recent times, the Fixed line customer base of BSNL is declining. In order to woo back its fixed-line customers BSNL has brought down long distance calling rate under OneIndia plan, however, the success of the scheme is not known. However, BSNL faces bleak fiscal 2006-2007 as users flee, which has been accepted by the CMD BSNL.[5]
Presently there is an intense competition in Indian Telecom sector and various Telcos are rolling out attractive schemes and are providing good customer services.
Access Deficit Charges (ADC, a levy being paid by the private operators to BSNL for provide service in non-lucrative areas especially rural areas) has been slashed by 37% by TRAI, w.e.f. April 1, 2007.[6] The reduction in ADC may hit the bottomlines of BSNL.
No comments:
Post a Comment