BSNL Has Now Installed 50000 4G Sites

Reported by Tanay Singh Thakur October 31st, 2024 at 06:46 am

In the last three months, over 25,000 sites have been added. At this pace, BSNL can install the remaining 50,000 sites by the end of the current financial year. Note that installing the sites, and making them operational are two different things

Highlights

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), a state-run telecom operator in India, has reached the milestone of installing 50,000 4G sites.
Out of this, over 41,000 sites are now operational (as of October 29, 2024).
Nearly 36,747 sites were established under Phase IX.2 of the project, and over 5000 sites were installed under the 4G saturation project.

bsnl has now installed 50000 4g sites

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), a state-run telecom operator in India, has reached the milestone of installing 50,000 4G sites. Out of this, over 41,000 sites are now operational (as of October 29, 2024). Nearly 36,747 sites were established under Phase IX.2 of the project, and over 5000 sites were installed under the 4G saturation project. The 4G saturation project was funded through the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF), also called Digital Bharat Nidhi. The short-term goal for the company is to deploy 1,00,000 4G sites, out of which 50,000 have been installed.

In the last three months, over 25,000 sites have been added. At this pace, BSNL can install the remaining 50,000 sites by the end of the current financial year. Note that installing the sites, and making them operational are two different things. So even if BSNL is successful in installing the 1 lakh sites by the end of the current financial year (i.e., March 31, 2025), it may take more months to make them operational.

Jyotiraditya Scindia, India's telecom minister has already confirmed that the completion of 1 lakh 4G sites by BSNL will be done by mid-2025. So we can expect that in the next nine months, BSNL will achieve its target. This would help the telco in offering high-speed internet to customers throughout India.

Read More - BSNL Reaches 41000 4G Sites Milestone

However, 1 lakh sites won't be enough for the telecom operator to provide seamless PAN-India coverage, even though BSNL has access to a 700 MHz band. Industry experts believe that the government and BSNL will take the right steps and necessary measures to keep expanding coverage in India after reaching the milestone of 1 lakh 4G sites.

Alongside 4G, BSNL is also gearing up to launch 5G. The technology provided by TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) led consortium can be upgraded to 5G through a simple software upgrade. According to some reports, BSNL will launch its 5G in the early phase of 2025.