Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has achieved a milestone of 5 lakh customers in the fiber broadband segment in the Tamil Nadu circle. That's 0.5 million users in this circle. In a social media post, BSNL Tamil Nadu said, "We express our sincere gratitude to all our Customers and Business Partners who have trusted and supported us to achieve this milestone."
For the unaware, BSNL made a similar announcement for the Kolkata circle. BSNL said that it achieved a milestone of 60,000 Bharat Fibre customers in Kolkata circle. Note that it is pretty hard to scale the fiber broadband business, especially in a country like India with a scattered population. The cost of fiber broadband is also much higher than that of mobile services, so generally, its uptake will be slower.
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BSNL started offering Bharat Fibre services in October 2020 to ensure that it can compete with Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio. The private telcos have left BSNL behind in the home broadband segment due to having a better brand and a more aggressive marketing push. However, BSNL is still the third-largest FTTH (fiber-t0-the-home) player in the country, and would want to capture more market share to again become the king in the segment.
BSNL already has a large home broadband customer base and a presence in almost every telecom circle. The merger of BBNL (Bharat Broadband Network Limited) was a boost to BSNL's FTTH and mobile business as it got access to BBNL's fiber assets throughout the country. FTTH is an important segment for the telcos as it brings high-paying customers into the mix and helps in generating more revenues.
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BSNL offers pretty competitive broadband plans compared to Jio and Airtel and its plans start under Rs 300 per month for customers.
