BSNL, MTNL to add 28,300 mobile sites: Telecom Minister

Telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that loss-making PSU telcos BSNL and MTNL are adding 28,300 new mobile sites in order to increase their capacity and coverage of mobile services. “To improve coverage and data speed, BSNL is augmenting its network by adding IP-based 10,502 new Node Bs (3G antenna) and 14,263 base transceiver stations (generally for 2G) in the network as part of phase 7 expansion plan,” the minister said. “MTNL is augmenting network by adding 1,080 Node-Bs and 800 BTSs in Delhi and 1,080 Node-Bs and 566 BTSs in Mumbai,” he added. Both the telcos are strengthening their network in order to enhance 3G download speed by about six times. “BSNL and MTNL are also upgrading their existing high speed downlink packet access 3G network supporting download speed of 3.6 Mbps and upload speed of 384 Kbps to support high speed packet access with download speed of 21.1 Mbps and upload speed of 5.76 Mbps per sector in each node-B,” he said. Earlier, the government had said that it will invest Rs 39,458 crore in BSNL and MTNL. “The financially-stressed public sector telecom companies that together have a debt of Rs 21,208 crore as of June-end, face declining revenue due to loss of market share, increasing expenditure and inability to invest in network expansion,” Prasad had said. The government is quite serious to improve the health of the two bodies. BSNL’s debts rose to Rs 6,448 crore in June 2014, as against Rs 3,335 crore in March 2012, while MTNL’s debts have gone up to Rs 14,760 crore at the end of last month from Rs 9,648 crore in March 2012.