However the target was 20,000 BTS installation. At the same time 'The Hindu Business Line' pointed out that DoT's Tarang website shows BSNL has only 10,000 active 4G BTS.
BSNL's 4G service has been a long-due. Airtel was first Indian telecom operator to launch 4G services in 2012 in Kolkata. Spectrum and choosing equipment vendor were many of few roadblocks for the PSU.
BSNL's main problem is choosing vendor by tender process as the cheapest one gets the contract and here Chinese vendors - Huawei and ZTE outperform European vendors (Nokia, Ericsson) and Samsung. Now Chinese vendors are mostly blacklisted, BSNL is unable to keep their networks upgraded. However all issues head to political sabotage, as I think.
Now BSNL to avoid such issues, depends on India-made technology. BSNL's 4G equipment and software are coming from all indigenous companies - Tata backed TCS, Tejas Network and C-DoT. These equipment are 5G ready i.e. BSNL can launch 5G seamlessly after some time. India-grown these 4G and 5G ready gears are perfect example of self-reliant India. The deal could be roughly Rs 19,000-crore worth.
Now TCS never had experience of such big scale 4G deployment. So they looked into their old friends who are also big telecom vendors - Nokia and Ericsson. Nokia had selected TCS as global IT partner back in 2013. While Ericsson had TCS as supplier for long back, and TCS won best supplier award from Ericsson in 2017. TCS consulted these two incumbent telecom technology vendor in early 2024.
Hopefully BSNL will iron out these issues with 4G roll out, and I expect that BSNL 4G would go pan-India by middle of 2025. Presently BSNL gets many subscribers porting in, as Jio, Airtel and Vi - the trio hiked the tariff. BSNL's plans are cheaper than theirs, albeit 3G. But if BSNL can keep 4G at such low price or may be at 20% hike - people would love to stay with BSNL.
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