Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) will invest Rs 900 crore to manufacture broadband consumer premise equipment (CPE) at its Kolkata factory.
To make mobile handsets and antennae tooMUMBAI: Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) will invest Rs 900 crore to manufacture broadband consumer premise equipment (CPE) at its Kolkata factory.
CPEs help customers access the internet faster through broadband. These are to be installed at the consumer’s residence and connected to the BSNL exchange with fibre optic cables. RK Agarwal, director, planning and new services, BSNL, said the company has tied up with some PC makers to install the equipment.
“This is a first of its kind from any telecom service provider in India. We have inked a deal with HCL Infosystems to bundle our broadband connectivity with their low-price notebooks,” he added.
The PSU telecom major will provide the broadband facility in 15,000 of its 20,000 exchanges. “To begin with, we aim to provide broadband facility in each taluka,” said Agarwal.
BSNL also plans to manufacture mobile handsets. “We will initially supply the mobile handsets to other telecom service providers and other mobile handset makers,” said Agarwal.
The company had started manufacturing handsets some time back but had to shelve the initiative as ‘the cost of production was too high to sustain,’ a BSNL official said.
“Increased competition and the boom in demand for telecom services are the major drivers for us to increase our offering portfolio,” Agarwal added. He hinted at a probable entry into manufacturing of active infrastructure like antennae.
The teledensity (number of people with telephone connectivity per hundred people) in India increased ten-fold in the fifty years since independence—from 0.47% to 4.7% in 1997. But, in the ten years since 1997, the teledensity has increased seven times to reach 28%.
Meanwhile, BSNL’s proposed IPO, which is expected before the Union government announces the next general election, is expected to raise Rs 40,000 crore.
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