BSNL to invest Rs 4,300 crore to expand network in 2018-19

State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is all set to invest about Rs 4,300 crore to expand its network in 2018-2019, while investing another Rs 5,000-Rs 6,000 crore is likely to be invested for government telecom projects, said a top official.

Anupam Shrivastava, Chairman and Managing Director of BSNL, told PTI that the Rs 4,300 crore investment will help to strengthen the mobile network, upgrade broadband infrastructure, and support the core network of the company.

Shrivastava said, “Rs 5,000 to 6,000 crore will be spent on the government projects like Bharat Net, Network for Spectrum, the Comprehensive Telecom Development Plan for North East, as well as boosting connectivity to Andaman with optical fibre network, and others.”

Shrivastava said the other government projects taken up by the company include providing bandwidth to Lakshadweep islands, and also provide connection to remote areas of Arunachal Pradesh.

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He said, “Government is investing in large connectivity projects, where private players are not going. BSNL is being used as one of the vehicles to execute those projects and we do that work on behalf of government.”

Shrivastava added that the company will likely install 12,000 mobile towers for 3G services and 10,000 mobile towers for 4G services in the country.

As per latest reports dated January 31, BSNL had 9.40 per cent of share of mobile services market and had an increase of 3.96 lakh customers during that month.