Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), a state-run telecom operator, has completed its pilot for 5G. The company is now expected to launch the next-generation network services pretty soon in India. Earlier reports suggested that the 5G rollout by BSNL will happen in the month of December 2025. The telco is expected to target key metro cities including Delhi and Mumbai.
According to an ANI report, Vivek Dua, Principal General Manager (PGM), CDN at BSNL, said, “We already have done the testing for the 5G. Our network, which is 4G right now, is upgradable and the trials already are in the field. So very soon we'll be rolling out our 5G stuff also.”
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BSNL recently launched 4G in over 98,000 sites, and this was flagged by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. BSNL’s 5G will also be homemade, and will be simply done through a software push. The technology stack which BSNL is using is supplied by the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) led consortium which includes companies such as C-DoT (Centre for Development of Telematics) and Tejas Networks.
This tech stack has seen interest from the global companies and it will be a major success for India if the country starts exporting it. India is now one of the select nations to have homegrown end-to-end technology stack. BSNL’s 5G will be homegrown completely.
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It will be a major achievement for the telco and India as a nation. The company is likely to launch 5G NSA (non-standalone) network for customers initially. But there are also reports which suggest that BSNL is testing 5G SA (standalone) in Delhi. At present, Jio is the only telecom operator in the country to offer 5G SA services to the customers. Because of that, Jio has been able to activate 5G VoNR (voice over new radio) services for the users PAN-India.
