Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), a state-run telecom operator, has confirmed that 5G rollout will happen in select cities in the next few months. BSNL has already decided on testing 5G SA (standalone) in Delhi via the network-as-a-service (NaaS) with select Indian vendors. Now the company is looking to fast-track that, and also potentially launch 5G in other select cities in the coming months. This was confirmed by the Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of BSNL, Robert Ravi at the ET Telecom 5G Congress 2025.
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Ravi said, "We are rolling out its 5G network via network-as-a-service (NaaS) in Delhi, and now we are looking to fast-track it. We are also considering how we can select some cities and then roll out 5G as soon as possible in the next few months. That is going to be a target."
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Ravi refrained from giving out any other details apart from this. At this point, the state-run telco is focused on rolling out 4G in one lakh sites across India. So far, the telecom operator has confirmed that more than 80,000 sites have been deployed and out that approximately 75,000 sites are on-air. By June 2025, BSNL will achieve the target of 1 lakh 4G sites.
After that, while the company is expected to start launching 5G, industry experts also believe that BSNL will continue to expand 4G. TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) has already said that BSNL can place a follow-on order as and when 1 lakh sites are deployed. BSNL is taking help from the TCS led consortium which includes C-DoT (Centre for Development of Telematics) and Tejas Networks to deploy 4G. The goverment might consider that BSNL could reserve up to 50% of the 5G sites for the foreign vendors.
