Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Type | Communication Service Provider |
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| Availability | Countrywide except Delhi & Mumbai |
| Founded | 19th century, incorporated 2000 |
| Revenue | US$ 9.67 billion (2007) |
| Owner | The Government of India |
| Key people | Kuldeep Goyal(CMD) S.D. Saxena (CFO) |
| Website www.bsnl.in www.bsnl.co.in |
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Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (known as BSNL, India Communications Corporation Limited) is a public sector communications company in India. It is the 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 BSNL has a customer base of 72.34 million (Basic & Mobile telephony). 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 36.21 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 Undertaking with estimated market value of $ 100 Billion. The company is planning an IPO with in 6 months to offload 10% to public.
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[edit] History
The foundation of Telecom Network in India was laid by the British sometime in 19th century. The history of BSNL is linked with the beginning of Telecom in India. In 19th century and for almost entire 20th century, the Telecom in India was operated as a Government of India wing. Earlier it was part of erstwhile Post & Telegraph Department (P&T). In 1975 the Department of Telecom (DoT) was separated from P&T. DoT was responsible for running of Telecom services in entire country until 1985 when Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) was carved out of DoT to run the telecom services of Delhi and Mumbai. It is a well known fact that BSNL was carved out of Department of Telecom to provide level playing field to private telecoms.Subsequently in 1990s the telecom sector was opened up by the Government for Private investment, therefore it became necessary to separate the Government's policy wing from Operations wing. The Government of India corporatised the operations wing of DoT on October 1, 2000 and named it as Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL).BSNL operates as a public sector.
[edit] Main Services being provided by BSNL
BSNL provides almost every telecom service, however following are the main Telecom Services being provided by BSNL in India:-
1. 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 on December 31, 2007, BSNL had 81% marketshare of fixed lines.
2. Cellular Mobile Telephone Services: BSNL is major provider of Cellular Mobile Telephone services using GSM platform under brandname CellOne[1]. Pre-paid Cellular services of BSNL are know as Excel[2]. As on March 31, 2007 BSNL had 17% share of mobile telephony in the country.
3. Internet: BSNL is providing internet as dial-up connection (Sancharnet)[3] as Prepaid, (Netone) [4] as Postpaid and ADSL-Broadband Dataone[5]. BSNL has around 50% marketshare in broadband in India. BSNL has planned aggressive rollout in broadband for current financial year.
4. Intelligent Network (IN): BSNL is providing IN services like tele-voting, toll free calling, premium calling etc.
[edit] BSNL Units
BSNL is divided into a number of administrative units, termed as telecom circles, metro districts, project circles and specialized units, as mentioned below:-
Telecom Circles: Telecom Circles & Metro districts are responsible for providing service to the customers. There are 24 Telecom Circles and 2 Metro districts.
1. Andaman & Nicobar Telecom Circle
2. Andhra Pradesh Telecom Circle
3. Assam Telecom Circle
4. Bihar Telecom Circle
5. Chhatisgarh Telecom Circle
6. Gujarat Telecom Circle
7. Haryana Telecom Circle
8. Himachal Pradesh Telecom Circle
9. Jammu & Kashmir Telecom Circle
10. Jharkhand Telecom Circle
11. Karnataka Telecom Circle
12. Kerala Telecom Circle
13. Madhya Pradesh Telecom Circle
14. Maharashtra Telecom Circle
15. North East-I Telecom Circle for Meghalaya,Mizoram and Tripura
16. North East-II Telecom Circle for Arunachal Pradesh,Manipur and Nagaland.
17. Orissa Telecom Circle
18. Punjab Telecom Circle
19. Rajasthan Telecom Circle
20. Tamil Nadu Telecom Circle
21. Uttar Pradesh (East) Telecom Circle
22. Uttar Pradesh (West) Telecom Circle
23. Uttranchal Telecom Circle
24. West Bengal Telecom Circle
Metro Districts
1. Kolkata Telecom District
2. Chennai Telecom District
Project Circles
1. Eastern Telecom Project Circle
2. Western Telecom Project Circle
3. Northern Telecom Project Circle
4. Southern Telecom Project Circle
5. IT Project Circle, Pune
Maintenance Regions
1. Eastern Telecom Maintenance Region
2. Western Telecom Maintenance Region
3. Northern Telecom Maintenance Region
4. Southern Telecom Maintenance Region
Specialized Telecom Units
1. Data Networks
2. National Centre For Electronic Switching
3. Technical & Development Circle
4. Quality Assurance
Manufacturing Units
1. Telecom Factory, Mumbai
2. Telecom Factory, Jabalpur
3. Telecom Factory, Richhai
4. Telecom Factory, Kolkata
Training Institutions
1. Advanced Level Telecom Training Centre(ALTTC)
2. Bharat Ratna Bhim Rao Ambedkar Institute Of Telecom Training
3. National Academy of Telecom Finance and Management
Other Units
1. Telecom Stores
2. Telecom Electrical Wing
3. Telecom Civil Wing
[edit] BSNL Present & Future
Since its corporatisation 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 45% of market share of ISP services.[1]
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 MB/s without any extra cost. This 2 MB/s broadband service is being provided by BSNL at a cost of just US$ 5.5 per month. Further, BSNL is rolling out new Broadband services as Triple play (telecommunications).
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, however due to intense competition in Indian Telecom sector in recent past BSNL's growth has slowed down.
BSNL is 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.[2]
[edit] Challenges
During 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.[3]
Presently there is an intense competition in Indian Telecom sector and various Telcos are rolling out attractive schemes and are providing good customer services. However, BSNL being legacy operator and its conversion from a Government Department, earns lot of criticism for its poor customer service. Although in recent past there have been tremendous improvement in working of BSNL, still it is below the Industry's expectations. A large aging (average age 49 years(appx)) workforce (300,000 strong), which is mostly semi-literate or illiterate is the main reason for the poor customer service. Despite all the limitations of a lagacy set-up, the management has been striving hard for the growth of the organisation - and has been able to give a tough and sustained fight to the competition - rather unheard in the Indian PSUs. Although in coming years the retirement profile of the workforce is very fast and around 25% of existing workforce will retire by 2010, still the workforce will be quite large by the industry standards. Quality of the workforce will also remain an issue. However, with the induction of Graduate Engineers in BSNL, the quality of its workforce is expected to enhance extensively. But BSNL has not been able to give Engineer like working atmosphere to its young recruits.
Access Deficit Charges (ADC, a levy being paid by the private operators to BSNL for provide service in non-lucarative areas especially rural areas) has been slashed by 37% by TRAI, w.e.f. April 1, 2007.[4] The reduction in ADC may hit the bottomlines of BSNL.
[edit] Recent News
[edit] GSM Hardware Tender
BSNL has trimmed down its 60 Million GSM tender by 50%, whereas main bidder Ericsson has picked up its share of order, the second bidder NSN has not accepted order so far. [6]
[edit] BSNL Brands
In year 2008, BSNL changed the name of all its existing services to streamline its Brand Portfolio.*BSNL Homepage
There may be some other BSNL Brands than those mentioned below.
| Service Type | Old Name | New Name |
|---|---|---|
| Landline (Wired) Phones | Bfone | BSNL Landline |
| CDMA Wireless Landlines / Mobiles | Tarang | BSNL WLL |
| GSM Postpaid Mobiles | Cellone | BSNL Mobile Postpaid |
| GSM Prepaid Mobiles | Excel | BSNL Mobile Prepaid |
| Dial-Up Internet | SancharNet | BSNL Internet |
| Broadband Internet | Dataone | Bsnl Broadband |
[edit] BSNL Offers Free Insurance Coverage for Customers
In the first move of its kind in the Telecom Sector in India, BSNL offers free insurance coverage for its subscribers[7] in case of:
- Accidental death
- Permanent total disability due to accident
The insurance coverage scheme will be applicable for the subscribers of landline including WLL & postpaid Cellular services. The Customers will be covered by Bajaj Allianz Insurance Co. Ltd.
The Capital sum insured per connection is Rs.50,000.
The period of insurance will be initially for one year from 14 January 2008
[edit] External links
- BSNL Homepage
- DoT Website
- WPC Website
- BSNL Dataone(Broadband Services)
- BSNL Internet
- BSNL Data Card - Internet on the move
- BSNL EVDO - Wireless Broadband
[edit] References
- ^ Reliance Life Insurance
- ^ The Hindu News Update Service
- ^ BSNL faces bleak fiscal as users flee
- ^ Trai slashes ADC by 37%, ILD calls to cost 20% less- The Week That Was-The Sunday ET-ET Features-The Economic Times
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