Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is reportedly in the final stage of commercial talks with TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) for deploying 6000 4G sites. The department is working in a systematic way, and to take a technological leap, it also needs to take a risk, Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s telecom minister, told ET Telecom.
Vaishnaw further told the publication that the world is looking at India as a serious nation because it has been able to come out with indigenous 4G technology that can be upgraded to 5G.
BSNL Set to Deploy Indigenous 4G in India
BSNL partnered with TCS (Tata Consultancy Services), Tejas Networks, and C-DoT (Centre for Development of Telematics) to test homegrown 4G technology. The trial process was completed successfully by the end of March, and now the government is waiting for the vendor to fulfil BSNL’s order for 40W radios to be deployed in 6000 telecom sites.
After this, BSNL will place an order for another 6000 telecom sites. The state-run telco plans to give another order to TCS for 6000 more sites. Following this up, BSNL will deploy 4G in 1,00,000 sites across the country.
Note that TCS is yet to accept the order price of Rs 560 crore that was offered by BSNL. Vaishnaw is confident about BSNL’s homegrown 5G as well. The telecom minister said that by early 2023, C-DoT should have a full technology stack of 5G, and the domestic manufacturers are already in the position to export 5G equipment.
It is worth noting that BSNL was recently awarded the project for setting up 2,542 mobile towers in the Naxal hit areas to upgrade them from 2G to 4G. The overall cost of the project has been estimated at Rs 2,426 crore. All of these sites will also be upgraded with the help of indigenous technology. BSNL will upgrade and run all the 2542 4G sites for the years to come.
