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Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited
Company typeCentral Public Sector Undertaking
IndustryTelecommunications
Founded15 September 2000; 24 years ago (2000-09-15)
FounderGovernment of India
Headquarters
New Delhi
,
India
Area served
India,

Nepal (with MTNL),

Mauritius (as MTML).
Key people
[1]
Services
RevenueIncrease ₹21,317 crore (US$2.5 billion) (2024)[2]
Increase ₹2,052 crore (US$240 million) (2024) [2]
Decrease ₹−5,367 crore (US$−630 million) (2024)[2]
Total assetsIncrease ₹167,086 crore (US$20 billion) (2024)[2]
Total equityIncrease₹106,626 crore (US$12 billion) (2024)[2]
OwnerDepartment of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications, Government of India
Number of employees
56,820 (as on 30 June 2024 as per RTI)
Divisions
Subsidiaries

BBNL[5]

Websitewww.bsnl.co.in

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (abbreviated as BSNL) (India Communications Corporation Limited) is an Indian central public sector undertaking, under the ownership of Department of Telecommunications, which is part of the Ministry of Communications, Government of India with its headquarters in New Delhi, India. The central public sector undertaking was established on 1 October 2000 by the Government of India. Its highest official is designated as Chairperson and Managing Director, who is a central civil service group 'A' gazetted officer from Indian Communication Finance Service cadre or central engineering service group 'A' gazetted officer from Indian Telecommunication Service cadre. It provides mobile voice and internet services through its nationwide telecommunications network across India. It is the largest government-owned-wireless telecommunications service provider in India.[6]

History

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BSNL Old logo
BSNL logo used until October 2024

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited is an Indian government enterprise and its history can be traced back to British India. The foundation of the telecommunications network in India was laid by the British sometime during the 19th century. During the British era, the first telegraph line was established between Kolkata and Diamond Harbour in 1850. The British East India Company started using the telegraph in 1851 and until 1854 telegraph lines were laid across the country. In 1854, the telegraph service was opened to the public and the first telegram was sent from Mumbai to Pune. In 1885, the Indian Telegraph Act was passed by the British Imperial Legislative Council. After the bifurcation of the Post and Telegraph department in the 1980s, the creation of Department of Telecom eventually led to the emergence of the government owned telegraph and telephone enterprise which led to the foundation of BSNL.[7] Until early 2000s, BSNL is the only service provider for Indian Railways to control and administrative communication circuits later, they are separated as Railtel.

For 160 years, BSNL had operated the public telegram service. In 2010, the telex network between its 182 offices was replaced with the "Web-Based Telegram Messaging System" which relied on internet connections rather than telex lines (which are more reliable where power outages are more common). This led to a decline in service, and the company applied the title "diminished service" to telegrams in 2010. Finally, on 15 July 2013, the public telegram service was shut down completely.[8][9]

Products and services

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Telephone and Mobile

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BSNL provides both fixed line telephones and mobile telephony services on the GSM platform.

BSNL Mobile

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Main article: BSNL Mobile

BSNL Mobile is a major provider of GSM network services under the brand names CellOne and BSNL all over India. It has wide network coverage in both urban and rural areas of India. It has over 121.82 million customers across India.[6]

BSNL Mobile offers prepaid, postpaid services and value-added services such as Free Phone Service (FPS), India Telephone Card (Prepaid card), Account Card Calling (ACC), Virtual Private Network (VPN), Tele-voting, Premium Rate Service (PRM). It also offers the IPTV which enables customers to watch television through the Internet and Voice and Video Over Internet Protocol (VVoIP).[10]

BSNL Landline

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BSNL Landline was launched in the early 1990s. It was the only fixed-line telephone service for the whole country before the New Telecom Policy was announced by the Department of Telecom in 1999. Only the Government-owned BSNL and MTNL were allowed to provide land-line phone services through copper wire in the country. BSNL Landline is the largest fixed-line telephony in India. It has over 9.55 million customers and 47.20% market share in the country as of 28 February 2021.[6]

Internet

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BSNL is the fourth-largest ISP in India, having a presence throughout the country. It also has the largest Firebase telecom network in the country, around 7.5 lakh kilometers, among the four operators in the country.[11]

BSNL Broadband

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Main article: BSNL Broadband

BSNL Broadband provides telecom services to enterprise customers including MPLS, P2P and Internet leased lines. It provides fixed-line services and landline using CDMA technology and its own extensive optical fiber network. BSNL provides Internet access services through dial-up connections as prepaid, NetOne as postpaid, and DataOne as BSNL Broadband.[12][13]

BSNL Bharat Fiber

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BSNL Bharat Fiber (FTTH) was launched in February 2019. It offers TV over IP (IPTV), Video On-Demand (VoD), Voice over IP (VoIP), Audio On-Demand (AoD), Bandwidth On-Demand (BoD), remote education, video conferencing services, interactive gaming, and Virtual Private LAN services. BSNL has said that its optic fiber network provides fixed access to deliver high-speed Internet up to 300 Mbit/s.[14][15][16]

Bharat Net

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With effect to the government of India's policy decision to provide state-owned BSNL with another revival package worth 1.64 lakh crore rupees, the struggling PSU was merged with the Government's special purpose vehicle BBNL. This gave the struggling PSU a boost and an additional advantage of additional 5.67 lakh kilometers of optical fiber wh,ich has been laid across 1.85 lakh village panchayats in the country using the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF). Currently, it has an optical fibre erble network of over 6.83 lakh kilometre.er

BSNL 4G

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BSNL started 4G service in some parts of India such as Bihar, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh in January 2019, but it is limited to a few cities and towns. Most of its 4G services are currently available in Southern India. However, BSNL is trying to launch pan India 4G services up to September 2022.[17][18] The telecom minister said that BSNL will launch its 4G services all over India on the 75th Independence Day of India along with various other projects.[19] BSNL is using 700 MHz and 2100 MHz bands to roll out the 4G services which can be upgraded to 5G in the future. BSNL has installed more than 40,000 plus 4G enabled and 5G ready towers.[20]

BSNL 5G

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On behalf of the government of India, the Minister of Communications Ashwini Vaishnaw announced that the State-Owned Telco would start its 5G operations by 15 August 2023. He also added that the 4G and 5G network of the state-owned BSNL would be a completely home-grown indigenous 4G and 5G network technology; thus, emphasizing more on Govt. of India's Atmanirbhar Bharat.[21][22][23][24]

Direct-to-Device

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In November 2024, BSNL introduced and made a trial of the new Direct-to-Device technology for the first time in India in partnership with VIASAT. This technology enables users to communicate without transversing a Base Station or Core Network. This technology is used in direct interaction between 5G-enabled devices to connect seamlessly to both terrestrial and satellite coverage.[25]

IP & cloud services

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BSNL Managed Cloud Services

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On 28 May 2013, BSNL launched "Internet Data Centre – Managed Cloud Services". This includes computation, software, data access and storage services for individuals as well as enterprises.[26]

Services include:

  • Cloud compute
  • Cloud Storage
  • Hosted Exchange
  • Hosted Virtual Desktop Infra (VDI)
  • Hosted Gateway
  • Hosted Email filter
  • Hosted web filter
  • Hosted backup and restore
  • Hosted DR
  • Hosted communication Services
  • Hosted Database

BSNL Wing Services

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On 16 August 2018, BSNL launched "BSNL Wings Services" in 22 telecom circles, in which there is no need for a SIM card or FTTH as it is a VoIP service through an app.[27] It offers unlimited free calling for one year throughout India.[28]

Administrative units

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BSNL vertical divisions

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BSNL is primarily divided into three vertical divisions:

  • BSNL — Consumer Fixed Access (CFA), wire line and broadband business.
  • BSNL — Consumer Mobility (CM), wireless business, primarily 3G/4G GSM services, WLL-M services. WLL-M
  • BSNL — Enterprise Business, Enterprise customers on turnkey basis.

Other than these three vertical divisions, there are electrical wings and civil wings, which take care of real estate monetization.

BSNL horizontal divisions

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Horizontally, BSNL is divided into several administrative units, variously known as telecom circles, metro districts, project circles and specialized units. It has 24 telecom circles, two metro districts, six project circles, four maintenance regions, five telecom factories, three training institutions and four specialized telecom units.[29] Each circle is headed by a Chief General Manager (CGM) who is an officer of Indian Telecom Service (ITS).

The organizational structure of BSNL is as follows: Chief General Manager being the head of the Circle who is the officer of HAG+ level, assisted by three or four Principal General Manager (PGM) who are the officer of grade HAG. The districts over a circle is being headed by the designations as General Manager officer of grade of SAG who looks over around two to four districts, while where the connections are less and the smaller district is being headed by Telecom District Manager (TDM) Officer of the grade of JAG and Telecom Divisional Engineer (TDE) officer of STS grade, all the officers above the post of TDE (including TDE) are of Group A, and they are the officers of grade of Indian Telecom Service (ITS) directly or promotive. Then the Group B consists of Additional Divisional Engineer, Sub Divisional Engineer and Junior Telecom officer and then the organization has Group C and D employees.

Merger and acquisitions

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On 24 October 2019, the Government of India announced a revival package for BSNL and MTNL which includes monetizing assets, raising funds, TD-LTE spectrum, and a voluntary retirement scheme for employees. Apart from the package, the Ministry of Communications has decided to merge MTNL with BSNL. Pending this, MTNL will be a wholly owned subsidiary of BSNL.[4][30][31][32]

On 24 October 2019, the Government of India announced a revival package for BSNL and has given its agreement to an in-principle merger (operational merger, i.e., only the operations of MTNL and BSNL would be merged, and they would be managed by BSNL) for MTNL and BSNL[33]

On 27 July 2022, the Government of India announced another revival package for the state-owned BSNL, for providing 4G and 5G services making the PSU more viable and vibrant and turning it into a profit making organization; under this policy decision the government also merged BBNL with BSNL.[5]

Controversies

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Website hacking

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In 2012 Nikhil Thakur, a hacker and Internet activist, broke into the Madhya Pradesh BSNL website and later on hacked the India BSNL website.[34][35]

Cyberattack

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In July 2017, BSNL suffered a cyberattack, in Karnataka, when malware affected the telco's broadband network using modems with default passwords.[36] The virus reportedly affected 60,000 modems and blocked their internet connectivity. Later, BSNL issued an advisory notice to its broadband customers, urging them to change their default router username and passwords.[37]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "The government has appointed Robert Jerard Ravi as the new Chairman and Managing Director of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) effective July 15". hindu business line. Retrieved 15 July 2024.
  2. ^ a b c d e "FY24 Q4 Results" (PDF). Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited. 1 June 2024. Retrieved 1 June 2024.
  3. ^ "Cabinet allows, BSNL to sell tower assets". Economic Times. 18 September 2017.
  4. ^ a b "MTNL to be a BSNL subsidiary". The Hindu. 29 June 2019.
  5. ^ a b "Cabinet clears BSNL-BBNL merger, approves revival package worth Rs 1.64 lakh cr". The Economic Times.
  6. ^ a b c "Press Release on Telecom Subscription Data as on 30 November, 2019" (PDF). Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. 30 November 2019. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 February 2020. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
  7. ^ "About us". BSNL, LLC. 17 November 2019.
  8. ^ "BSNL decides to discontinue 160-year-old telegram service". The Times of India. 12 June 2013. Archived from the original on 15 June 2013. Retrieved 13 June 2013.
  9. ^ Joshi, Sandeep (12 June 2013). "Dot, dash, full stop: Telegram service ends July 15". The Hindu. Chennai, India. Retrieved 13 June 2013.
  10. ^ "BSNL Launches VVoIP". Techtree.com. Archived from the original on 13 December 2011. Retrieved 17 September 2012.
  11. ^ "BSNL plans to monitise fibre network". The Economic Times. 18 April 2019.
  12. ^ BSNL Broadband Archived 24 November 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  13. ^ NetOne Archived 3 May 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  14. ^ "Bharat Fiber FTTH Overview". BSNL, LLC. 17 February 2019.
  15. ^ "BSNL Bharat Fiber FTTH, Everything you need to know". India Today. 6 February 2019.
  16. ^ "BSNL Broadband VOIP Configuration for Landline Phone Instrument". www.bsnltariff.com. 31 August 2021.
  17. ^ "BSNL has given September 2022 timeline for pan-India 4G rollout: MoS Telecom - ET Telecom". ETTelecom.com. Retrieved 1 December 2021.
  18. ^ "Too Soon? BSNL Will Roll Out 4G Services Across India Before September 2022". India Times. 2 December 2021. Retrieved 3 December 2021.
  19. ^ "BSNL & TCS Will Launch 4G On Independence Day? This Is What We Know So Far About BSNL 4G Launch". Trak.in. 22 February 2022. Retrieved 28 February 2022.
  20. ^ India, Aaj (1 December 2024). "BSNL Has 50,708 4G enabled, 5G-Ready Towers Across India". Aaj India. Retrieved 1 December 2024.
  21. ^ www.livemint.com (2 October 2022). "BSNL to roll out 5G in August 2023: Ashwini Vaishnaw". www.livemint.com. Retrieved 8 October 2022.
  22. ^ "TCS set to win $2-billion deal from BSNL for 4G and 5G roll-out". www.business-standard.com. Retrieved 8 October 2022.
  23. ^ "TCS set to win $2-billion deal from BSNL for 4G and 5G roll-out". www.rediff.com. Retrieved 8 October 2022.
  24. ^ "Going big BSNL set to buy 4G gear from TCS". www.thehindubusinessline.com. 3 October 2022. Retrieved 8 October 2022.
  25. ^ "Direct-to-device satellite services successfully trialed for first time in India by Viasat and BSNL". viasat.com. 15 October 2024. Retrieved 9 November 2024.
  26. ^ "Internet Data Center- Managed Cloud Services".
  27. ^ "BSNL offers wings services". NDTV. 2 February 2019.
  28. ^ "BSNL Wings Services launched in 22 telecom circles". BSNL. 29 June 2019.
  29. ^ "BSNL Units". Archived from the original on 6 September 2012.
  30. ^ "Government approves Revival package for BSNL, MTNL". Economic Times. 23 October 2019.
  31. ^ "BSNL, MTNL to be merged, along with special package". India Today. 23 October 2019.
  32. ^ "BSNL, MTNL to be merged, centre lines up rs 70000 crore revival package". Times of India. 29 October 2019.
  33. ^ "BSNL, MTNL to merge under Rs 69,000 cr revival plan, 4G spectrum, VRS part of scheme". India Today. Retrieved 8 October 2022.
  34. ^ "BSNL Server Vulnerable To Hacking; Shows A 19 Yr Old". 12 November 2012.
  35. ^ "all india bsnl hacked". hindustan times. Archived from the original on 8 November 2012.
  36. ^ "BSNL asks 2000 users to change modem password after malware attack". Indian Express. 28 July 2018. Retrieved 9 February 2018.
  37. ^ "Malware affects thousands of BSNL broadband modems". The Hindu. 17 July 2017. Retrieved 18 November 2021.
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