BSNL to tie up with cable ops for offering broadband services

State-run telecom major Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is in discussions with cable operators to offer broadband services using cable network for last-mile connectivity in small cities and towns.

“We are in talks with various cable operators to use their access to each and every household. It will be a profit-sharing arrangement,” BSNL’s chairman and managing director, Anupam Shrivastava, told the Business Standard.

BSNL has already tested and tried such a model in few locations and the service will be across the country (except Delhi and Mumbai where Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited operates) in the next financial year.

The last-mile connectivity of cable operators will be used with BSNL’s optic-fibre network, he said.

Through various measures, BSNL expects to double its revenues from data and broadband services to Rs 15,000-16,000 crore in the next two to three years. Currently, it generates Rs 1,350 crore from the data segment and Rs 7,500 crore from the broadband segment. While mobile services account for revenues of Rs 13,500 crore.

Currently, the focus is on data services — Wifi, broadband and 4G (fourth generation) to increase its revenue flows. The company has been offering discounts for its landline and broadband services.

Through the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN), the government has plans to offer broadband services in rural areas. NOFN will connect 250,000 gram panchayats by December 2016 at an estimated cost of Rs 30,000-35,000 crore. Once implemented, NOFN will provide 100-Mbps (megabytes per second) bandwidth to ease broadband services.

NOFN is being funded by the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF), that is built with contributions from private telecom operators. However, for end-to-end services, service providers will have to set up their own infrastructure at the gram panchayats.

According to data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), the number of wired broadband subscribers grew marginally to 15.32 million in December 2014 from 15.23 million in November 2014.

Shrivastava, in an earlier interview with the Business Standard, had said, “We realised we  missed the mobile bus in 2006, when the penetration of cell phones was only 40-45 per cent. Now, the penetration of mobiles has moved up to over 90 per cent. This is the journey, mainly voice, that BSNL has missed. But we want to make sure we are the leaders in data services. The age of voice is over and data is the next thing. We are in a strategic position, be it mobile, landline or optic-fibre network.”

An increasing competition and constraints in its capacity expansion plan led BSNL to post a loss of Rs 1,823 crore in 2009-10. He now aims to bring back BSNL into profits in two-three years.