BSNL eyes Rs 1,000 cr revenue from infra sharing biz

With its financial performance dwindling due to competition and wage costs, state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) is targeting Rs 1,000 crore revenue within a year from infrastructure sharing business.

With a huge asset base of more than 40,000 towers across the country, BSNL hopes to generate Rs 1,000 crore of revenue within a year from infrastructure sharing business, the company said today.

BSNL is aggressively working towards sharing its passive as well as active infrastructure with existing and new telecom operators. It said the Master Sharing Agreement (MSA) for sharing BSNL towers is in the final stages with some telecom operators and is likely to be finalized soon.

In addition, BSNL has also decided to hire infrastructure from various Infrastructure Providers (IPs) to speed up its roll out for mobile network in different states.

BSNL in 2008-09 has posted a net profit of Rs 574.85 crore on a total revenue of Rs 35,811.92 crore. BSNL's profit has declined during the current financial year on account of increase in cost of employees due to the implementation of pay commission recommendations and a decline in revenue of fixed line services, it said.

The PSU is also looking at operators outside India.

BSNL is focusing on increasing its revenues through new Value Added Services. It has recently launched new services such as movie download, video streaming, full track music download and Multi player Video Games on its 3G platform, in addition to video calls, high speed internet and mobile TV services that are already provided.