Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), a state-run Indian telecom operator, is soon going to achieve its target of 1 lakh 4G towers. The telco has used indigenous technology to roll out these 1 lakh towers. Jyotiraditya Scindia, union telecom minister of India, said in a recent interview that BSNL will start working on 5G after 1 lakh 4G towers are deployed by April - May 2025. The government has maintained that BNSL will complete its rollout of 1 lakh 4G towers by mid-2025. So far BSNL has installed more than 62,000 4G towers and is on track to achieve its target. BSNL's 5G will be a simple upgrade over the 4G tech that the company is deploying.
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Scindia was speaking to ANI when he said that the government had two choices for BSNL's 4G rollout, either use foreign technology or use Indian tech, and the government chose the latter which was a challenging path. He said that India is now only the fifth nation globally which has its own 4G stack.
It is worth noting that BSNL is the only telecom operator in India which has deployed indigenous 4G. All the other telecom operators worked with foreign vendors to bring 4G to their customers. This is a major development for the nation, as the developed 4G stack can also be exported to other countries who are in need of this technology.
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After 5G, Scindia said that a telecom manufacturing zone has to be established in India. Manufacturing is key to the growth of the telecom sector in India, said Scindia. For this, the government has already announced a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for the sector. These efforts have generated around Rs 65000 crore in revenues, and Rs 13,800 crore in exports, and resulted in the creation of about 25,000 jobs.
