BSNL to invest Rs 2,500 crore in H2 FY17 on expansion plans

Under the GSM expansion project, the company will install 20,000 BTS this year to improve service quality

Stepping up investments on projects that entail internal funding, state-owned BSNL will pump in about Rs 2,500 crore during the second half of this financial year in various projects such as expansion of wifi hotspots, installation of mobile towers and strengthening core network.

"Our investments for full financial year are in two parts. About Rs 4,000 crore is earmarked for BSNL's own projects and Rs 3,000 crore for government-funded projects," Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) Chairman and Managing Director, Anupam Shrivastava told PTI.

"For projects that are being funded by us, we have already pumped in about Rs 1,500 crore during the first half of the financial year, and about Rs 2,500 crore will be invested between October and March for setting up of wifi hotspots, GSM expansion and strengthening of core network," he said.

Installation of mobile towers in left-wing extremist states, BharatNet and Defence's network for spectrum project, are among the government-funded programmes being executed by BSNL.

Projects that are funded internally include expansion of wifi hotspots, GSM mobile network, and strengthening of core network, that is, laying of optical fibre and investment in related network equipments.

Under the GSM expansion project, BSNL will install 20,000 BTS this financial year to improve service quality, and most of these would be installed between now and March, he said.

The telecom PSU, has opted for a mix of "capex and opex model" for wifi roll out.

"Currently, 2700 wifi hotspots are already in place in the country and we would like to take it to 40,000 wifi hotspots by March 2018. Our wifi strategy is based on opex and capex model," he said.

The 'opex model' involves creation of wifi hotspots by franchisees who install, manage and run the sites for a period of five years. The partners are also responsible for sales and marketing activity and operate on revenue-sharing model. Under the 'capex model', BSNL creates and owns its wifi hotspots, he explained.

"We are going to connect these hotspots to our mobile network and therefore when our mobile customer enters our wifi zone, the data session will be seamlessly transferred to the Wifi hotspot. It will be part of his data package, but he will suddenly start getting high speeds," Shrivastava added.