BSNL Chairman and Managing Director R K Upadhyay said the company will invest Rs 40,000 crore for expanding telecom network.
However, he did not specify the duration of the Capex plan.
The state-run telecom operator’s network capacity expansion will assist it to become a leading telecom operator again.
BSNL’s capacity expansion has faced several issues due to its strategies and lack of support from key telecom equipment vendors in India.
Since BSNL could not expand in the country, its competitors such as Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, Reliance Communications, etc. improved market share.
The ailing BSNL is currently looking for support from the government to revive the company.
Earlier, BSNL said it would set up video conferencing centers at 200 locations in 2013. The new public video conferencing centers across the country will be based on revenue share model. BSNL’s target is to complete the project in the first half of 2013.
“We lagged behind other private companies, as we could not purchase the required equipment in the last 4-5 years due to many reasons. Now everything is OK and tenders to purchase have been floated,” said BSNL CMD on Monday.
BSNL is emphasizing on converting present telephone exchanges into New Generation network NGN, to give all mobile facilities to land line subscribers. 29,000 such exchanges shall be converted to NGN of which 28,000 are in the rural sector.
BSNL is in the process of reducing costs to improve its profitability. One of the options is VRS, PTI reported.
On cutting costs, Upadhyay said the PSU is awaiting government’s approval for offering VRS to employees.
At present, BSNL is spending 52 percent of its capital in employees’ salaries as compared to other competitive companies who are just spending 5-6 percent.
BSNL posted revenue of Rs 19,305 crore for the nine month period ending 31 December, 2012. It reported loss of Rs 6,536 crore during the same period.
BSNL had registered revenue of Rs 27,933.50 crore for the financial year 2011-2012, registering 3.3 percent decline from Rs 28,876 crore revenue for the financial year 2010-2011.
picture source: network2media.com
