BHARAT SANCHAR NIGAM LIMITED(BSNL) is a state-owned telecommunication company in India. BSNL is the sixth largest cellular service provider, with over 57.22 million customers as of December 2009 and the largest land line telephone provider in India. 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).citation needed] Currently has a customer base of 90 million as of June 2008. 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, 2009 stood at INR 397.15b (US$7.03 billion) with net profit of INR 78.06b (US$ 1.90 billion). BSNL has an 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.
BSNL provides almost every telecom service in India. The main telecom services provided by BSNL:
* Universal Telecom Services : Fixed wireline services & Wireless in Local loop (WLL) using CDMA Technology called bfone and Tarang respectively. 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 BSNL Mobile. As of Sep 30, 2009 BSNL has 12.45% 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 (BSNL Broadband). 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.
* 3G:BSNL offers the '3G' or the'3rd Generation' services which includes facilities like video calling etc.
* IPTV:BSNL also offers the 'Internet Protocol Television' facility which enables us to watch television through internet.
* FTTH:Fibre To The Home facility that offers a higher bandwidth for data transfer.This idea was proposed on post-December 2009.
BSNL is divided into a number of administrative units, termed as telecom circles, metro districts, project circles and specialized units, as mentioned below:
Maintenance Regions Jharkhand Telecom Circle Eastern Telecom Maintenance Region Karnataka Telecom Circle Telecom Circles Metro Districts Andaman & Nicobar Telecom Circle Calcutta Andhra Pradesh Telecom Circle Chennai Assam Telecom Circle
Project Circles Bihar Telecom Circle Eastern Telecom Project Circle Chhattisgarh Telecom Circle Western Telecom Project Circle Gujarat Telecom Circle Northern Telecom Project Circle Haryana Telecom Circle Southern Telecom Project Circle Himachal Pradesh Telecom Circle IT Project Circle, Pune Jammu & Kashmir Telecom Circle
Maintenance Regions Jharkhand Telecom Circle Eastern Telecom Maintenance Region Karnataka Telecom Circle Western Telecom Maintenance Region Kerala Telecom Circle Northern Telecom Maintenance Region Madhya Pradesh Telecom Circle Southern Telecom Maintenance Region Maharashtra Telecom Circle Specialized Telecom Units North East-I Telecom Circle Data Networks North East-II Telecom Circle National Centre For Electronic Switching Orissa Telecom Circle Technical & Development Circle Punjab Telecom Circle Quality Assurance Rajasthan Telecom Circle
Production Units Telecom Factory, Mumbai Telecom Factory, Jabalpur Telecom Factory, Richhai Telecom Factory, Kolkata
Other Units Training Institutions Telecom Stores Advanced Level Telecom Training Centre North East Task Force Bharat Ratna Bhim Rao Ambedkar Institute Of Telecom Training Telecom Electrical Wing National Academy of Telecom Finance and Management Telecom Civil Wing Regional Telecom Training Centres Circle Telecom Training Centres District Telecom Training Centres
Present and future
BSNL (then known as Department of Telecom) had been a near monopoly during the socialist period of the Indian economy. During this period, BSNL was the only telecom service provider in the country (MTNL was present only in Mumbai and New Delhi). During this period BSNL operated as a typical state-run organization, inefficient, slow, bureaucratic, and heavily uinionised. As a result subscribers had to wait for as long as five years to get a telephone connection.The corporation tasted competition for the first time after the liberalisation of Indian economy in 1991. Faced with stiff competition from the private telecom service providers, BSNL has subsequently tried to increase efficiencies itself. DoT veterans, however, put the onus for the sorry state of affairs on the Government policies, where in all state-owned service providers were required to function as mediums for achieving egalitarian growth across all segments of the society. The corporation (then DoT), however, failed miserably to achieve this and India languished among the most poorly connected countries in the world. BSNL was born in 2000 after the corporatisation of DoT. The efficiency of the company has since improved. However, the performance level is nowhere near the private players. The corporation remains heavily unionised and is comparatively slow in decision making and implementation. Though it offers services at lowest tariffs, the private players continue to notch up better numbers in all areas, years after year. BSNL has been providing connections in both urban and rural areas. Pre-activated Mobile connections are available at many places across India. BSNL has also unveiled 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.
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.
On the 20th of March, 2009, BSNL advertised the launch of BlackBerry services across its Telecom circles in India. The corporation has also launched 3G services in select cities across the country. Presently, BSNL and MTNL are the only players to provide 3G services, as the Government is still in the process of auctioning the 3G spectrum to private players.
BSNL has also launched a Entertainment Portal called BSNL Hungama Portal from where subscribers could download contents like music, music videos for free and also download or play various games online. Only Tamil,Kannada,Telugu & Hindi are provided at present. Hopes are there that the database could be expanded. BSNL charges a fixed monthly subscription fee for this function.
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.
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. The reduction in ADC may hit the bottomlines of BSNL.
BSNL launched 3G services in 11 cities of country in 2nd march 2009.MTNL which
operates in Mumbai and Delhi first launched 3G services in these cities.
BSNL 3G Settings:
Once you have 3G services activated on your number, you can start using 3G services by punching in either “bsnlnet” or “gprseast.cellone.in” as the APN on data settings section of your phone. (replace ‘east’ with your region, for ex. ‘west’ for Maharastra and ’south’ for Chennai/Tamilnadu)
Well, before you start using the services, you need to take care of the following things:
* You have a 3G supported phone with 3G signals receiving on it (Check for the letters ‘3G’ on extreme top of your mobile screen)
* You have 3G services activated on your SIM
* There is at least 50 rupees of balance remaining on your phone (incase you are prepaid subscriber)
* And finally you have configured your phone correctly with the above mentioned APN.
