BSNL to launch 4G mobile services, eyes 20% market share in district

Tribune News Service

Nitin Jain

Ludhiana, January 30

State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has geared up to offer 4G mobile services in the district, officials have said.

With this, Ludhiana will become the fourth district in the state to get ‘Swadeshi 4G network’ after the BSNL had launched the same in pilot mode across 200 tower sites in Ferozepur, Pathankot and Amritsar last year.

In Ludhiana, the BSNL has planned 426 tower sites for the 4G launch.

Ludhiana, General Manager (GM), Telecom, AA Tazir, said this during the meeting of the Telecom Advisory Committee (TAC) here recently. He said the BSNL was targeting a 20 per cent market share (mobile subscribers) in Ludhiana by the end of 2024, after the 4G roll-out.

Rajya Sabha MP Sanjeev Arora, who attended the meeting as a TAC member, told The Tribune on Tuesday that the work was on in full swing to offer the mobile 4G services with ‘Swadeshi 4G network’ to BSNL customers in Ludhiana shortly while the 5G rollout was also expected till 2025.

Under the mobile 4G project Phase IX.2 in the Ludhiana business area, the BSNL has planned 389 existing tower sites and 37 new sites for the 4G launch.

While 123 sites have already been commissioned, integrated and java script object notation (JSON) done, another 117 4G sites have been commercially put on air as well.

He said a new control and user plane separation (CUPS) and broadband network gateway (BNG) had been installed and all services had been migrated to the new set up last month. “It’s a 100G capacity BNG network with 18 100G ports, 60 10G ports and 24 1G ports,” Arora said.

To further improve the existing consumer fixed access (CFA) services, the BSNL has also installed a new super edge router in Ludhiana with 8 100G ports and 60 10G ports. Besides, three provider edge (PE) routers have also been set up at three separate locations in the city.

Further, the BSNL has also enhanced Ludhiana’s multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), which is a data-carrying mechanism in packet-switched networks, with Chandigarh, Jalandhar, Patiala and Bathinda through multiple 10G links.

Addressing the TAC meeting, Arora advised officials to ensure holding regular meetings of the TAC so that grievances and issues related to th BSNL could be taken up without any delay.

Urging that the meeting of the TAC should be held on a quarterly basis, the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) member in the Upper House of Parliament from Punjab gave certain suggestions to the authorities for further improving services and revenue growth of the BSNL.

The MP said the PSU should try to explore the private sector, besides the government sector, for revenue growth. He said the time had gone when expected revenue growth could be expected after depending upon the government sector alone.

He suggested that the BSNL should offer comparatively cheaper rates for its services compared to competitors in the private sector.

Arora assured that he would take up all issues related to the Municipal Corporation, Improvement Trust, GLADA, NHAI and Punjab Government raised by the GM, Telecom, for their early resolution.

He was apprised by the GM about challenges being faced by the BSNL in Ludhiana. It was told that the BSNL had faced massive cable interruptions due to road widening and development works done in the recent past under the Smart City project. Besides, it was facing difficulties in getting permission from the MC, Improvement Trust and NHAI for laying and maintenance of local and optical fibre cables.

Complimenting the BSNL for soon launching the 4G service, the parliamentarian said it would be a big challenge for company to win back mobile customers.

He also appreciated that the BSNL was targeting a 20 per cent market share (mobile subscribers) by the end of 2024, which was only possible by 4G roll-out, besides focusing and ensuring 100 per cent network uptime.

The GM, Telecom, said under the policy guidelines of the Centre and endorsed by the state government regarding mandatory utilisation of the BSNL network, they were looking forward to being associated with all telecom services/enterprise business (EB) projects of the governments and PSUs.

He said the EB team was approaching all government and private entities for exploring opportunities of the EB from all government departments and leading corporate houses, MSMEs and housing societies as well.

He demanded that the BSNL should be given an opportunity to serve the dedicated bandwidth for field equipment, data centre and MC under the Smart City project in Ludhiana.

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