BSNL Group seeks Govt Approval to Upgrade 3G sites to 4G

The All Unions and Association of BSNL (AUAB) has asked the Government to direct the DoT to approve BSNL’s proposal for upgrading 3G sites to 4G sites for launching 4G.

BSNL to Finally Move to 4G

The AUAB stressed that introducing 4G has remained the only option to revive the state-run telco.

Earlier, the management committee of BSNL board had approved a proposal to upgrade about 18,500 BTSs supplied by Nokia.

In a letter dated 16th August, 2021, P. Abhimanyu, Convenor, AUAB and Chandeshwar Singh, Chairman, AUAB, to Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Communications, said, "the full BSNL Board, consisting of 2 additional Govt nominees from the DoT, took up the proposal for discussion on 23.07.2021, however did not approve the same".

They added, "the role of the DoT and its Board members on this matter, is really unfortunate and deplorable. We really fear that such actions will only help the private operators".

The telco has been working on launching 4G since December 2019. However, as per AUAB, the proposal was objected to by the Board members from the government (DoT). In March this year, a telco group sought PMO intervention to accelerate the commercial 4G launch.

Minister of State (MoS) for Communications Devusinh Chauhan recently informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply that BSNL has issued a Letter of Intent (LoI) to five local companies for the participation in the 4G tender. BSNL expects 4G rollout within 10 months on successful completion of trials by homegrown gear makers while the network can be rolled out after 14 months from the said date if the Proof of Concept (PoC) gets completed within four months.

BSNL Lagging Years Behind Private Telcos

In October 2019, the government approved a Rs 69,000 crore revival package for BSNL and MTNL. This package included a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) and monetization of assets. Also, for the current fiscal, the government has allocated Rs 24,084 crore for 4G spectrum.

The state-run telco has been saying that without 4G network, it will lose out to private telcos. Notably, the said private telcos are already piloting their 5G network.