Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), a state-run telecom operator, had provided up to 38.93 lakh FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) connections by April 30, 2024. BSNL is the third-largest FTTH service provider in India by market share. To offer FTTH services throughout India, BSNL and MTNL (Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited) have rolled out OFC (optical fiber cable) covering 8.96 lakh route kilometers. It is also worth noting that Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) was also merged into BSNL. Thus, BSNL also has access to BBNL-deployed OFC covering 6.89 lakh route kilometers.
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The main purpose of BBNL was to run BharatNet, which is a program to connect the villages of India with high-speed FTTH services. BSNL is helping the BharatNet project with its expertise in the field of fiber deployment and distribution of services.
"BSNL has provided 38.93 lakhs Fiber to the Home (FTTH) broadband connections on their network as on 30.04.2024. BSNL is also, providing FTTH connections using BharatNet in villages/Gram Panchayats involving around 6,000 BharatNet Udhaymies (BNUs)," Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar, Minister of State for Communications said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.
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Along with the fiber services, BSNL is also trying to promote innovation in the country through its Proof of Concept (PoC) policy. Small companies, start-ups, and enterprises can test and develop their innovative products and solutions with the help of BSNL's PoC policy.
BSNL Bharat Fibre offers FTTH services in almost all parts of the country, and there are specialised offerings for rural and small towns keeping in mind the budget constraints of consumers. To compete with the private telcos, BSNL also offers OTT (over-the-top) bundled broadband plans to consumers with high-speeds and plenty of FUP (fair-usage-policy) data to go with it.
