BSNL CMD: We have a clear vision and unique approach for 4G/5G rollout

My first priority is customer satisfaction. I am committed to ensuring that our customers are satisfied, and everything I do revolves around that goal. I prefer to let our actions speak for themselves. For instance, you can compare our revenue from last year with the efforts we are taking this year. 

Today, we launched seven services. These are all consumer-centric. For example, a BSNL customer who is using FTTH (fibre to the home) can stay connected with Wi-Fi wherever he goes. We are also trying to expand this service to rural areas, having already reached more than 100 villages where each village has FTTH. Our target is to reach 1,000 villages at the earliest.

The government has put in a lot of confidence in BSNL, and we are move forward strongly.

We have developed our own innovative, indigenous 4G. The biggest advantage of this is that any information which requires to be sensitive and secure for the country, can be managed by our engineers in C-DOT and TCS, who write all the codes in-house. That is the biggest advantage. This allows us to tailor-make solutions to any user requirements. Cyber security is a growing threat, and telecom network needs to be very secure. So far, we had different technologies for protection but today, we have our indigenous technology. In the future, we can even develop a secure stack to monitor and protect network traffic, ensuring clear protection against any threats.

We are trying to do our best to roll out 4G services, which are already available in a number of places across the country.

Currently, we are testing and allowing users to experience it. The official launch will happen as soon as possible. There are already 1.8 crore 4G customers in beta phase (test mode) across the country.

I can say that the user experience has improved tremendously compared to what we had from 2G. The speeds are at par with other competitors. We want to ensure that the customer satisfaction is top most with the entire network thoroughly tested network before we launch it officially.

We will go with what the government policies are. It will depend on the business model, but I can’t comment right now.

My prime interest today is to see that the consumers are happy. We provide them quality services and we continuously improve. Today we feel that there is no need of any tariff hike. We have a clear vision, business model and we want to do it differently (in 4G and 5G). We have different plans available in every circle. We have to balance. There is a tight balance between the socio-economic aspect and the responsibility of BSNL.

We have developed an innovative plan wherein we have identified land not just for sale and rental, but for other uses as well. For example, in some areas, we are trying to set up warehousing that is growing in big scale. We are also looking at putting up wind or solar energy storages in large pockets of lands on a model, which we can sell back to the State. Another interesting concept we are considering is — can I use my last leg as a mobile edge computing (MEC)? The data centres, even in remote villages, are becoming a very big initiative. We are thinking if we can leverage this. For example, I can give space and firms can put their own rack. They can have a data centre for their own activities.

Companies like Microsoft or Google don’t want a centralised data centre, making MEC an attractive option. Another example is what we have done with NBCC in Delhi where we can build commercial or residential complexes and sell them to monetise instead of directly selling the land. But these are all in the works.

We are still talking to investors, talking to various agencies and once the blue print is ready we will go back to the government. We have to take approval on a case-to-case basis like we took approval for signing agreement with NBCC.