Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), a state-owned telecommunications service provider (TSP), is trying to come out with 4G using homegrown equipment and core. Earlier, the government nominees on the board had said no to the upgradation of 13,533 in western and southern India to 4G because Nokia was going to be the partner for equipment.
Thus, BSNL is currently working with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for rolling out homegrown 4G. It has resulted in more delays for the company to rollout out 4G networks while the other telcos have started upgrading the network to make it 5G ready.
4G Delay Could Still Work in Favour of BSNL
While there was a delay in launching 4G, if BSNL can deliver a quality network experience to the users by 2023 with its 4G networks, it would be a game-changer for the telco. BSNL is currently in the trial phase with TCS.
Once the trials are successfully completed and the tech’s Proof-of-Concept (PoC) is generated, it would become easy for BSNL to rollout 4G within ten months in most parts of the country. However, when BSNL goes to launch 5G NSA (non-standalone), the telco would be doing that using 4G core developed within India.
This would make BSNL’s networks very secure for the users and also keep the nation’s security intact. Other telcos would be taking the help of Nokia, Ericsson, and Samsung for rolling out 5G NSA.
BSNL can market its network services as ‘Made in India’ with all the future generation networks. However, it would mean that the telco will have to mostly wait longer than the private operators to launch new technology services as well as face higher costs for network deployment as there is no Indian vendor manufacturing at scale to bring the cost down. Regardless, BSNL will have something that the private operators don’t, and it would make all the difference if the telco could deliver consistent and quality services in most parts of the country.
