Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, the state-owned telco has recently announced that it will install VSAT Gateways at Yeur (near Thane in Maharashtra). The public telecom carrier has said that it would install these VSATs to provide high speed internet connectivity to remote areas of India like North-East, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal, Uttarakhand and LWE (left wing extremism) affected states like Chhattisgarh, Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand etc. The telco will also install another VSAT gateway at Sikandrabad (near Bulandshahar in UP). These VSATS will further facilitate internet connectivity with up to 100 Mbps speed.
VSAT networks have certain edge over the usual mobile data services. The High Throughput Satellite Services (HTS VSAT) have no last mile POP dependency and they are able to relay high speed internet with 100 Mbps download speed and 12 Mbps upload speed. Lastly, the VSAT gateways will also be able to cater pan-India internet service which will be scalable to 50,000+ rural locations. Another added advantage of the VSAT gateways is the cost effectiveness which is due to the shared bandwidth system.
Furthermore, BSNL states that its VSAT broadband has opened up a host of new services and capabilities to the far-flung areas where till now it was difficult to provide adequate connectivity. It will also be possible to provide true broadband to every location across the nation with adequate speed, performance and reliability.
N K Mehta, Director (Enterprise) BSNL told that "Satellite communication would play a significant role to make the DIGITAL INDIA a reality, with this BSNL is able to connect defence establishment, administrative offices in difficult areas and help local administration in mitigating natural disaster effectively."
BSNL has been a leader in India's broadband segment with over 10 million customers under its belt and the telco even has over 110 million mobile subscribers. The government is also aiming to provide satellite connectivity in North-East regions under the BharatNet program.