BSNL to set up 1070 4G Plus Wifi Hotspots for rural customers

Public sector BSNL will set up as many as 1070 Wifi hot spots in rural exchanges in Kerala as part of its expansion plans to reach out to rural customers.

Kerala Circle CGM of BSNL, P T Mathew told reporters here that it would be set up in the next six months.

"We are planning to set up 1070 4G Plus Wifi Hot spots in rural exchanges in the state with the support of Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) within the next six months," he said.

"Users will be able to download 4GB data per month free through these hot spots," he said.

A total of 140 Wifi (BSNL 4G Plus) sites with 418 Access Points are already working with Mobile Data offload facility in prominent places in the state, he said.

The public sector telecom provider plans a range of new initiatives, including camera surveillance solutions in Kerala, he said.

"We are planning to launch the camera surveillance solutions in Kollam and Thrissur districts soon. Discussions with authorities concerned are going on in this regard. We expect that it will be highly helpful for police," he said.

BSNL has also plans to associate with the government's much touted Smart City project and to provide broadband/FTTH connections in upper primary and lower primary schools in the state.

The official said intensive efforts are on to link 95 lakh BSNL mobile customers in the southern state with their Aadhaar numbers as per the Supreme Court instructions in this regard.

"A total of 6.2 lakh BSNL mobile phones customers have already been linked with their Aadhar numbers in the state. We are planning to link all our mobile customers by January 18," he said.

Stating that Kerala is one of the top states in the country in terms of data usage, Mathews said the monthly mobile data usage of the circle has increased by about 300 per cent during the period from this April 16-Jun 17.

The much awaited 4G roll out of BSNL is expected by the end of this year, the official said.

When asked about the impact of the recent malware attack in BSNL broadband modems in the circle, Mathew said around 20,000 people had booked faults in this regard and now the number of complaints have come come down to 5000.

"Adequate protection mechanism had been initiated in the main server and we expect that it will not be repeated," he said.