Big plan of government company to install 1 lakh indigenous BSNL 4G towers in the country, can be upgraded to 5G

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is installing 1 lakh completely indigenous 4G towers under the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative. Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia announced this at a summit. He informed that core technology is being developed by the government agency C-DOT, telecom tower (RAN) by Tejas Networks, and system integration by TCS. The government aims to complete this work by June 2025, after which all these towers will be upgraded to 5G.

Scindia said, "Till now only China, Finland, Sweden and South Korea were the countries that had the capability to build their own telecom stack. But now India has also joined this list. BSNL's 1 lakh indigenous 4G towers are a big step in this direction." Apart from this, the Government of India is also working fast on 6G technology, which will further strengthen the telecom infrastructure in the country.

Talking about the financial condition of BSNL, Scindia said that BSNL has made a profit for the first time after 18 years. In the October-December quarter, BSNL earned a net profit of Rs 262 crore, while in the same period last year the company had suffered a loss of Rs 1,262 crore. At the same time, operational costs were reduced by 18%, due to which EBITDA (profit before earnings) increased from Rs 450 crore to Rs 1,500 crore.

BSNL also launched a Direct-to-Device (D2D) satellite messaging service, which will provide enhanced connectivity even in rural and remote areas. Scindia said that when telecom companies are consolidating in most countries of the world, India is heading towards telecom expansion. India is one of the few countries where four large telecom operators (Jio, Airtel, Vi, and BSNL) are competing.