India’s National Telecom backbone and Pan India 3G Mobile service operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has said that the Government’s decision to fix the Reserve price for for GSM spectrum auction at Rs 14,000 crore would not not have major impact on BSNL in the immediate future.
Mr. R.K. Upadhyay, Chairman and Managing Director, BSNL, said that BSNL was striving to ensure quality and affordable mobile, basic telecom and broadband services to its customers.
BSNL has a large workforce also had certain social obligations toawrds the country. No other telecom operator has been in a peculiar position as the BSNL. The teleco had the resources and only needed to harness them to make it a profitable organization, and we are in process to do that.
Mr.Upadhyay also said that, we expect to achieve all our targets for the current financial year and at least break even and we are planning to launch public video conferencing rooms and Wi-Fi spots across the country, apart from other innovative to explore options on how best to utilize our real estate and infrastructure for revenue generation.
BSNL also exploring ways to leverage its CDMA /EVDO network he added.
kamlesh mehta August 7, 2012 at 10:21 pm
Internal tip ??
Rajiv August 7, 2012 at 8:10 pm
Good news BSNL comes out from Losses… mark my words, results will announce in next month – September
Gowrishankar August 7, 2012 at 11:23 am
The National Telecom Policy 2012 (NTP 2012) has now become the official policy after one year of discussions. Of course, the context of the policy – the aftermath of the 2G scam – has now changed with 122 licenses being cancelled by the Supreme Court. So some of the earlier drivers of the new policy, bailing out the new entrants who had secured licenses fraudulently are no longer there, but the broad thrust of the policy – help the private sector at the cost of the public sector telecom companies remain. Also a new scam is in the making. Some of the telecom majors had not bid for an all India license for 3G services, but were offering all India services through “roaming”. Once this was challenged in the courts, the Government finally moved and declared this attempt as illegal. NTP 2012 appears to give a break-out-of jail card to such parties by declaring free roaming as an objective of policy.
The key elements of NTP 2012 are the following:
The predominant role of the private sector in telecom services
Allow sharing of physical infrastructure and networks
Sharing, pooling and trading of spectrum
Mergers and acquisitions to help consolidation of players, read create bigger private monopolies
Abolish roaming charges
Apart from these, there are also various good wishes tucked into the policy without any concrete measures for realising them. They are
The increase of broadband connectivity from the very low level of about 14 million currently to 175 million by 2017 and 600 million by 2020
Making India into a major telecom manufacturing hub
Any new policy should start by looking at the past telecom policies – NTP 94 and NTP 99 – and analyse the developments that lead to the requirement of a new policy. NTP 2012 pretends that that it is operating in vacuum. It has no analysis of NTP 99 with regards to its goals and what has been achieved or not achieved. Nor is there any analysis of the new technologies that are are coming in and the policy requirements to address the new technological changes. In telecom particularly, the driver of policy worldwide has been the rapid technological changes taking place. NTP 2012 has no analysis of what are the new technological changes that are emerging and the challenges to existing policy.
The origin of NTP 2012 lies in the need to bail out private operators. The current mess is the result of the scam ridden telecom regime that has characterised the UPA and earlier NDA telecom policies. Instead of addressing the root cause of the current mess, the attempt in NTP 2012 is to help the private operators at the expense of the public sector operators – BSNL and MTNL. This comes out clearly when we look at NTP 2012 and its talk of sharing infrastructure and networks between operators.
Under Raja, amongst the many scams that had taken place in the telecom sector, there is one that has largely gone unnoticed. This was his directive to BSNL to allow “intra-circle” roaming by private operators by using BSNL’s network. World over, roaming means an operator has a home territory for which he has a license and therefore a home network. If a subscriber leaves this home territory, he then roams on the network of other operators; this is inter-circle roaming as telecom territories are designated as circles in India. Intra-circle roaming was a mechanism through which Raja allowed private operators who had secured a license at throw-away prices and did not want to invest capital in building a network to start operations by using BSNL’s network. Since no private operator would allow their network to be used, therefore the need to force BSNL to open their network to Raja’s favourite private operators.
TRAI had protested against this peculiar concept of intra-circle roaming arguing that it would mean all the targets in the license of building networks by a certain date and meeting various other performance obligations would then become meaningless. However, Raja paid no heed to such objections. For him, it was important that the private operators acquire subscribers immediately without building a network so that they could sell their licenses at a high price. Sibal – the new telecom minister — had not only endorsed Raja’s infamous first come first served policy of giving licenses, he also wanted to elevate Raja’s policies of poaching on BSNL’s network. This is why NTP 2012 (originally NTP 2011 as it was floated in 2011) has two specific policy provisions. One is elevating intra-circle roaming to a policy of sharing networks and the other of allowing private operators of selling their licenses more easily under the guise of facilitating consolidation though mergers and acquisitions. In other words, make Raja’s scam ridden regime the new policy.
Worldwide, there have been discussions on sharing of networks by operators. The prevailing consensus is that while the passive network elements – the cellular towers – can be shared, the active network, the cells and the switches cannot be shared without causing enormous regulatory complications. Further, no operator would allow its network to be used by a competitor except for roaming. For this reason, while there are examples of sharing of the physical infrastructure such as cell towers, there are no examples in other countries of sharing of the active network as proposed in 2012 policy. If networks can be shared as is being proposed in the policy, all the objections that TRAI had against intra-circle roaming would also hold.
This brings us to the next big hole in NTP 2012. In 2010, the 3G licenses were auctioned. Airtel, Vodafone and Idea cellular had evidently made a cartel and did not bid for all the circles. Instead, each of them bid for only a certain number of circles and therefore paid a fraction of the price that BSNL and MTNL together paid for an All India license. However, under the guise of roaming agreements, all the 3 parties started offering 3G services in all parts of the country. In other words, they were offering services to subscribers in areas for which they had not secured licenses, in patent violation of the license terms and conditions. Initially, the Department of Telecom (DOT) and the Ministry of Communications and Information technology (MOC&IT) took no action on this despite internal notes an memos that this was a violation of the license terms and conditions and unfair to BSNL who had been forced to pay a much higher amount for their all India license. The BSNL Association filed a petition in Delhi High Court on this matter and finally forced the Ministry to act. The matter is now under TDSAT as the private players have appealed against this step of DOT.
The current policy – NTP 2012 – again legitimises under the guise of policy — what is illegal under the current terms and conditions. This is being attempted by doing away altogether with the concept of roaming – the policy talks about having no roaming charges.
Interestingly, doing away with roaming did not appear in the original draft policy document. It appears to have been inserted in the final policy document only in order to help the 3G operators in their case against DOT.
As we had discussed earlier, the concept of roaming arises from the concept of a home territory of an operator for which he has secured a license. Therefore, doing away with roaming charges makes no sense unless we also do away with licensing and awarding spectrum for circles. Given the current regime, which is built on the concept of circle-wise award of licenses and spectrum, a policy intent of doing away with roaming charges has no meaning. It makes sense only if we take into account the current case of 3G before TDSAT and a desire by the Ministry to help the private parties.
If we look at NTP 2012 as a policy document, it is a queer mishmash of good intentions and disjointed statements which appear to have no relation to the objectives of the policy. It makes sense only if we look at the policy that these well-meaning objectives are a cover for a set of steps that the ministry wants to take to help the private operators but cannot state as objectives.
Let us take a look at the central premise of the policy – the need to consolidate the telecom sector. If this is indeed a goal, what sense is there of a policy that seeks to create a new class of operators who will be just having the physical infrastructure? This class of new operators will hold the physical infrastructure which can then be used by other operators. In other words, even more fragmentation of the telecom sector.
While this policy measure makes no sense in terms of the objective of consolidation, it makes sense if we look at the underlying objective of the policy – help the private operators at the expense of the public sector BSNL and MTNL. BSNL today has the largest copper cable network in the country – 10 times larger than any other basic service operator. What is being proposed under the guise of creating new operators, is hiking off the copper cable network of BSNL and making it available for all the private operators.
The concept of separating the network from delivery of services has many serious issues — technical, legal and commercial. No serious study has been done by DOT before proposing such a policy. Neither has it been examined what the implications of this will be in terms of the licenses that have already been issued. Instead, the Raja policy of using BSNL’s infrastructure for private operators is now being extended to all areas of telecom services.
While self-reliance has been a part of both NTP 1994 and 1999, Indian manufacturing has been completely destroyed in the last 20 years. India had a strong manufacturing sector with ITI manufacturing a major part of the high-
jay August 7, 2012 at 11:07 am
@sachin
hi, you go in areas like remote villages, militant areas, tribal areas, naxal areas, border areas and watch how that people can communicate with others. No any private operators are bothered about that people, they are bothered about their profit only. THIS IS CALLED SOCIAL OBLIGATION…….Why private operators are not erecting towers and other infrastructures in these areas. Are they not INDIAN…..
ARNAB August 7, 2012 at 10:34 am
Actually GOVT. uses BSNL’s structure & shadow to provide illegal benefits to private operators , on the other hand it is imposed to BSNL to do exactly what others do….its not fair…..
shiv August 7, 2012 at 1:30 am
@Daxesh Patel absolutely right.
ABC August 7, 2012 at 1:17 am
AS AFR AS I REMEMBERED BSNL LAUNCHED RS. 12 ( IN SOME CIRCLES RS. 11) VOUCHER IN THAT 15 DAYS INCOMING WAS FREE THROUGHT INDIA
http://telecomtalk.info/bsnl-offers-unlimited-free-incoming-calls-on-roaming-for-rs12/70096/
THIS WAS SUPERB PLAN BUT DUE TO THE DIRECTIONS GIVEN BY TRAI BSNL WITHDRAWS IT TARRIF
& NOW THE TARRIF THEY INTRODUCED IS EXPENSIVE
AS IF THE CUSTOMER IS GOING FOR 6-7 DAYS IN ROAMING THEN HE HAS TO GET IT RECHARGED FOR 90 DAYS
EARLIER IT WAS BETTER WHEN THE VALIDITY OF TARRIF WAS LONG BUT TRAI RESTRICTED IT TO 90 DAYS AT LEAST TRAI SHOULD ALLOW 1 TARRIF FOR LONG TIME VALIDITY
& REQUEST TO BSNL TO RE LAUNCH THE STV-11 OR STV-12 VOUCHER AGAIN
sunny August 7, 2012 at 12:58 am
ABSOLUTELY CORRECT@Daxesh Patel
Nilay August 7, 2012 at 12:19 am
Well said….@sunny
sunny August 6, 2012 at 11:45 pm
Do u find tata everywhere ,uninor, mts aircel, airtel ,idea ,which of these company provide broadband in pan india level?? bsnl provides broadband even in rural area , all north east , j&k andman nicobar , leh ,ladaakh every where. bsnl is having pan india 3g license , bsnl is having pan india cdma license, pan india basic telephony, wimax , voip, provides lease circuit to other corporate sector, ftth technology . u tell me any one company name wchich is having all these thing in one, TELECOM IS NOT ONLY WHAT U TALK ON UR MOBILE, COME AND SEE AT ALL LEVEL WHAT ACTUALLY TELECOM IS ???……I AM AGREE THAT BSNL COPIED ALL THE PLANS BUT TO RUN ANY PLAN FOR LONG TIME THAT IS THE MAIN ISSUE, THIS IS ONLY IN BSNL……TO PROVIDE SERVICES AT ALL LEVEL WITHOUT FOCUSSING TO MUCH ON PROFIT THIS IS SOCIAL OBLIGATION…
Anjan August 6, 2012 at 11:44 pm
BSNL local and std onnet 1ps/sec, local and std offnet 1.2ps/sec, incoming roaming calls free for 6 months and you will get in DATA if you are using data pack in roaming also data is free. in roaming sms will charge 5ps or free if you are using any sms pack.
In the case of sms no operator is giving free sms. even though if we are using sms pack also roaming sms is chargeble.
sunny August 6, 2012 at 11:43 pm
do u find tata everywhere ,uninor, mts aircel, airtel ,idea ,which of these company provide broadband in pan india level?? bsnl provides broadband even in rural area , all north east , j&k andman nicobar , leh ,ladaakh every where. bsnl is having pan india 3g license , bsnl is having pan india cdma license, pan india basic telephony, wimax , voip, provides lease circuit to other corporate sector, ftth technology . u tell me any one company name wchich is having all these thing in one, TELECOM IS NOT ONLY WHAT U TALK ON UR MOBILE, COME AND SEE AT ALL LEVEL WHAT ACTUALLY TELECOM IS ???……I AM AGREE THAT BSNL COPIED ALL THE PLANS BUT TO RUN ANY PLAN FOR LONG TIME THAT IS THE MAIN ISSUE, THIS IS ONLY IN BSNL……TO PROVIDE SERVICES AT ALL LEVEL WITHOUT FOCUSSING TO MUCH ON PROFIT THIS IS SOCIAL OBLIGATION…@sachin
Daxesh Patel August 6, 2012 at 11:19 pm
@sachin
Who started incoming free? BSNL. Before that, private operators looted the country.BSNL is providing (loss making & costly ) Landline services in Rural,hilly, naxal affected and in that areas also, which you have not seen ever in your life.This services are adding pressure up to Rs.6000 to 7000 crore per year on BSNL. BSNL can not close this services , due to government pressure,even after various thousand crore rupees loss every year. THIS IS CALLED “SOCIAL OBLIGATION” MY FRIEND. You will not see Airtel,Vodafone or any company providing wired line services.Because they are costly in each means i.e installation & maintanance.
Daxesh Patel August 6, 2012 at 11:10 pm
Mukesh Ambani also tried in 2002, when he was leading RIL group(before seperating from Anil Ambani).He was failed in 2002.Infact, he failed in Retail also.RIL is expertise in Petrochem & Oil sector only.
sachin August 6, 2012 at 10:49 pm
ha ha ha bsnl has certain “Social obligation” i did,nt understand what does it mean? it the private operators who revolutionized the indian telecom industry no one can deny it.it is the operators like airtel,Idea,reliance,tata,uninor,aircel,Mts etc etc..who introduced new plans all the time and when bsnl start to loose customers they also followed the same offers or we can say bsnl copied.those who praise bsnl please think ..who introduced life time validity ? who introduced one second pulse rate ? who introduced 30 paise per minute to any call in india ? it is surely private operators like airtel,tata docomo and uninor etc etc…even in land phones they are offering life time validity,but Bsnl never introduced it till date
Saurabh August 6, 2012 at 10:05 pm
I heard a news on a business channel that Uninor will bid for 9 circles while Videocon is interested in 8 circles, Tata Docomo and Idea in 3 and 9 circles respectively where they have lost license. So there are very little chances of anyone getting PAN-India. But wait, here is some twist in the story,
That news also indicated that our very own Mukesh Ambani’s company Reliance Industries will also participate in the auction and if they are participating, I’m sure we can have Reliance as Pan-India license winner.
I was just thinking whether it is just a coincidence or what? Reliance Industries wanted Goverment to set base price at 8 times to the cost licenses were given in 2008. In 2008 Pan-India licenses were provided for Rs.1651 crores. Now as per Reliance Industries recommended price it comes out to be 1651 X 8 = 13208 crores. The base price is set at 14000 crore which is near the figure of what Reliance suggested. So has the base price been set to benefit Reliance Industries? RIL has around 75000+ crores cash surplus which company needs to implement in new sectors. So money is not a problem for them. They already have Pan-India 4G spectrum. They have got the base price they wanted so that other find it hard to get spectrum as other operators are not in situation to bid.
This just can’t be a coincidence. Policies have been made to help Reliance Industries.
Like Apple surprises the Tech world, Reliance suprises the corporate arena in India. Today the stock price of Reliance Industries also jumped more than 5 percent which is highest jump since March. I’m personally holding RIL stock 200 @ 690 and today it was money making day for me. But I didn’t sold as I have a longer term view. So whatever happens, investors are the beneficiaries at last.
SHIV August 6, 2012 at 9:41 pm
east or west BSNL is best…….
SHIV August 6, 2012 at 9:40 pm
BSNL IS BEST
abhijith August 6, 2012 at 9:29 pm
@Asit Paul
exactly . . Always Bsnl
sunny August 6, 2012 at 9:21 pm
only voice call rates are cheaper in private operator , because some them got the spectrum at less price that is also not going to be for coming days, all other thing are at higher rates in comparison to BSNL, U WILL SEE A CALL RATE HIKE AFTER 2G SPECTRUM AUCTION, THEN U WILL NOT APPRAISE THE OPERATOR LIKE DOCOMO, UNINOR OR OTHERS WHO R OFFERING AT CHEAPER CALL RATE…BUT STILL IF U SEE BSNL CALL RATES ,STV AND COMPARE THIS WITH OTHERS U WILL NOT FIND ANY MAJOR DIFFERENCE AND BSNL IS PROVIDING PAN INDIA LEVEL ANDMAN NICOBAR , LEH LADHHAK, AMARNATH ,J&K THIS ALSO MATTERS
syam August 6, 2012 at 8:12 pm
east or west airtel is best…….
Asit Paul August 6, 2012 at 7:58 pm
@ABC
Tata DoCoMo GSM NOT available in Pan India. So, in NE, We cant use DoCoMo.
Sudhakar August 6, 2012 at 7:54 pm
Hey ABC,
Before docomo offered all calls (home network and even while roaming) at Rs.0.01 per second and local sms at Rs.0.60 per sms and STD SMS at Rs.1.20 per SMS. The SMS rate applied even in roaming. But now, all calls in roaming at Rs.0.015 per second. Waste.
Do not blindly praise other operators. I am not in favour of any operator.
ABC August 6, 2012 at 7:07 pm
TATA DOCOMO 1P/SEC TO ALL LOCAL & STD ON NET, LOCAL & STD OFF NET
WHILE ROAMING 1.5P/SEC BOTH INCOMING & OUT GOING
& ALSO ADDED FEATURES LOCAL ON NET NIGHT CALL 1P/4 SEC WITH OUT ANY TARRIF
FIRST 2 SMS WILL BE CHARGED & THEN 98 LOCAL/STD MSG. ARE FREE.
Nirakar Panda August 6, 2012 at 6:47 pm
Petrol ke rate badhne se Santa bola, mujhe koi fark nehi padta,Kyon ke me kal v 100ka dalwata tha aur abhi v 100 ka dalwata hun.
Exactly, I feel there will be no impact on BSNL as this is a state run Elephant who never care for customers nor the Organizational Profit
Asit Paul August 6, 2012 at 6:10 pm
BSNL is simply the best!
Local OnNet @1p/s, Local OffNet/Std/ Roaming IC/OG @1.2p/s, Pan India License, Best rural coverage- no private operator can beat BSNL!
Adi August 6, 2012 at 5:59 pm
@PD
agree 
Yes
syam August 6, 2012 at 5:02 pm
In my opinion,
BSNL, AIRTEL AND VODAFONE may survive here.
Pan india spectrum may get in to the hands of Bsnl and airtel.
Because BSNL is a govt company and the reason for airtel is that it it the telecome gaint in india with market share and revenue. The ARPU (average revenue per user) is very high in the case of airtel when compared to other operators. So i think the airtel will definitely got pan india spectrum. But the frequencies which they bid may different due to the competition.
Any way BSNL will definitely got spectrum in 900 mhz which is very efficient and can provide 2g coverage with very effective manner. In the cas of airtel they will maintain the same frequency in there own high penetrated circles.
In kerala airtel is providing in 1800 mhz because of this here it has got low range. Anyway lets see the game……..
i45 August 6, 2012 at 4:10 pm
no major operator except bsnl will go for pan india spectrum…the fixing of 14k base price by govt is an indication of going away from crony capitalism…the operators who are crying saying they dont see any business,the best for them is to sell out….they dont want to raise the money from equity ..just want to hold major part of company and exercise their clout over politicians…
PD August 6, 2012 at 4:01 pm
We can put it in this way too….! “BSNL has turned its very large (updated at the time of recruitment and now turned) outdated (responsible then) and irresponsible and (useful then but pushed into a) useless workforce ..due to which its in a lOSS ” Surely then “Yeh tho hoona hit tha….!”
PD August 6, 2012 at 3:50 pm
GOOD NEWS ! So far, so good ! But history shows that BSNL/MTNL too followed private players in the long-run !
Adi August 6, 2012 at 3:40 pm
Yes!!! BSNL has very large and outdated and irresponsible and useless workforce!!! due to which its in a LOSS …
TAMAL August 6, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Carry on BSNL………
Pandu August 6, 2012 at 2:24 pm
as always , it is a Govt operator and nothing shakes it !