State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd has set aside ₹7,700 crore as capital expenditure in 2015-16 and will spend this on Next Generation Network (NGN), mobile phase-7 expansion, Wi-Fi, among others, its CMD Anupam Shrivastava said.
The capital expenditure last year was ₹3,300 crore, he said.
“BSNL is on the path of revival. July onwards, additional customers have doubled. Mobile network portability has become positive in BSNL’s favour which means it has seen a net gain in customers via MNP,” Shrivastava told media persons here.
In the last two years, 25,000 additional towers have been set up and now BSNL has over a lakh towers in the country. “There has been a 42 per cent rise in revenue from tower business in 2014-15. We plan to set up a subsidiary tower company to monetise our tower assets. While we have the Cabinet nod, we are waiting for inter-ministerial committee recommendations for this,” he said.
The company plans to focus on data to drive growth and is enhancing mobile network data capacity to improve coverage and quality of service. “The per day throughput in mobile has crossed 250 terabytes. This used to be 70 terabytes in 2013,” Shrivastava said.
BSNL’s income from services has increased by 4.16 per cent at ₹27,242 crore in 2014-15 compared with the previous year. “This is a five-year high for the company,” he said, adding that while the revenue has gone up, administrative expenses have come down on account of falling employee strength due to retirements.