Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited d/b/a BSNL is a government owned telecommunications service provider headquartered in New Delhi, India. It is under the ownership of Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications, Government of India. It was incorporated on 1st October 2000 by the Government of India. Its top official is designated as Chairman and Managing Director who is a central government engineer also being a Group ‘A’ Gazetted Officer of the ITS cadre. It provides mobile voice and internet services through its nationwide telecommunications network across India. It is the largest wireline telecommunications network service provider in India with more than 50% market share and fourth largest wireless telecommunications operator. As of May 2021, BSNL has 123 million subscribers in India.
Name
The name Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited derives from Hindi, which means Indian Communications Corporation Limited in English.
History
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited is the India’s oldest communication company and its history can be traced back to the British India. The foundation of telecom network in India was laid by the British sometime during the 19th century. During the British era, the first telegraph line was established between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour in 1850. The British East India Company started using the telegraph in 1851 and till 1854 telegraph lines were laid across the country. In 1854, the telegraph service was opened to the public and the first telegram was sent from Mumbai to Pune. In 1885, the Indian Telegraph Act was passed by the British Imperial Legislative Council. After the bifurcation of Post and Telegraph department in the 1980s, the creation of Department of Telecom eventually led to the emergence of the State owned telegraph and telephone company which led to the foundation of BSNL.
After providing the telegraph services for 160 years, BSNL shut it down completely on 15 July 2013. It began delivering telegrams to the public in February 1858; this service was upgraded to a web-based messaging system in 2010 and had been offered through 182 telegraph offices across India.
Products and services
Telephone and Mobile
BSNL provides both fixed line telephones and mobile telephony services on GSM and CDMA platforms.
BSNL Mobile
BSNL Mobile is a major provider of GSM network under brand name CellOne all over India. It has wide network coverage in both urban and rural areas of India. It has over 120.42 million customers across India.
BSNL Mobile offers prepaid, postpaid services and value-added services such as Free Phone Service (FPH), India Telephone Card (Prepaid card), Account Card Calling (ACC), Virtual Private Network (VPN), Tele-voting, Premium Rate Service (PRM). It also offers the IPTV which enables customers to watch television through the Internet and Voice and Video Over Internet Protocol (VVoIP).
BSNL Landline
BSNL Landline was launched in early 1990s. It was the only fixed-line telephone serving for whole country before the New Telecom Policy was announced by the Department of Telecom in 1999. Only the Government-owned BSNL and MTNL were allowed to provide land-line phone services through copper wire in the country. BSNL Landline is the largest fixed-line telephony in India. It has over 10.41 million customers and 49.34% market share in the country.
Internet
BSNL is the fourth largest ISP in India, with having presence throughout the country. It also has the largest fibre-based telecom network in the country around 7.5 lakh kilometers among the four operators in the country.
BSNL Broadband
BSNL Broadband provides telecom services to enterprise customers including MPLS, P2P and Internet leased lines. It provides fixed-line services and landline using CDMA technology and its own extensive optical fiber network. BSNL provides Internet access services through dial-up connections as prepaid, NetOne as postpaid, and DataOne as BSNL Broadband.
Bharat Fiber
Bharat Fiber (FTTH) was launched in February 2019. It offers TV over IP (IPTV), Video On-Demand (VoD), Audio On-Demand (AoD), Bandwidth On-Demand (BoD), remote education, video conferencing services, interactive gaming, Virtual Private LAN services. BSNL said that, its huge optic fiber network provides fixed access to deliver high speed internet ranging from 256 kbit/s to 100 Mbit/s.
IP services
BSNL Wing Services
On 16 August 2018, BSNL has launched “BSNL Wings Services” in 22 telecom circles in which, there is no need of SIM card or cable wiring as is a VoIP service through an app. It offers unlimited free calling for one year throughout India.
Administrative units
BSNL vertical divisions
BSNL is primarily divided into three verticals:
- BSNL – Consumer Fixed Access (CFA), wire line and broadband business.
- BSNL – Consumer Mobility (CM), wireless business, primarily 3G GSM services. WLL services which were widely deployed are being phased out.
- BSNL – Enterprise Business, Enterprise customers on turnkey basis.
- Other than these three verticals, there are electrical wings and civil wings which take care of real estate monetization.
BSNL horizontal divisions
Horizontally, BSNL is divided into a number of administrative units, variously known as: telecom circles, metro districts, project circles and specialized units. It has 24 telecom circles, two metro districts, six project circles, four maintenance regions, five telecom factories, three training institutions and four specialized telecom units. Each circle is being headed by a Chief General Manager (CGM) who is an officer of Indian Telecom Service (ITS).
The organisational structure of BSNL is as follows: Chief General Manager being the head of the Circle who is the officer of HAG+ level, assisted by three or four Principal General Manager (PGM) who is the officer of grade HAG. The districts over a circle is being headed by the designations as General Manager officer of grade of SAG who looks over around two to four districts, while where the connections are less and the smaller district is being headed by Telecom District Manager (TDM) Officer of the grade of JAG and Telecom Divisional Engineer (TDE) officer of STS grade, all the officers above the post of TDE (including TDE) are of Group A and they are the officers of grade of Indian Telecom Service (ITS) directly or promotive. Then the Group B consists of Additional Divisional Engineer, Sub Divisional Engineer and Junior Telecom officer and then the organisation has Group C and D employees.
Merger and Acquisitions
On 24 October 2019, the Government of India has announced revival package for BSNL and MTNL which includes monetising assets, raising funds, TD-LTE spectrum, voluntary retirement scheme for employees. Apart from package, the Ministry of Communications has decided to merge MTNL with BSNL. Pending this, MTNL will be a subsidiary of BSNL.
Controversies
Cyber Attack
In July 2017, BSNL had suffered a cyber attack which affected south India, especially Karnataka, when a malware affected the telco’s broadband network using modems with default passwords. The virus has reportedly affected 60,000 modems and blocked their internet connectivity. Later BSNL issued an advisory notice to its broadband customers, urging them to change their default router username and passwords.