IS IT TOO LATE TO REVIVE BSNL?

Private telcos have already launched 5G services but BSNL is yet to roll out 4G commercially

- Gulveen Aulakh

India plans to turn its creaky telecom department into a company next month," Reuters wrote in a news article on 29 September 2000. “…but the road from state-owned monopoly to modern telecom firm looks long and winding".

That month, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) was incorporated and it inherited the business from the government’s department of telecom services. With 2.4 crore telephone connections, BSNL, overnight, became one of India’s largest companies—its annual turnover, back then, was assessed at ₹20,000 crore and it had a book value of assets worth ₹68,000 crore.

The new company faced a roadblock right away. About 400,000 employees from the department went on strike, resisting the change.

BSNL survived that strike and several others over the next two decades. But the road ahead still remains long and winding.

At a time when private telecom companies have already launched 5G services, BSNL is yet to roll out 4G commercially. It has been losing customers and its losses widened to ₹8,161 crore in 2022-23, from ₹6,981 crore the previous year. Its revenue, at ₹20,700 crore today, is roughly the same as 23 years ago, when it started.

On 7 June, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs cleared a ₹89,047 crore revival package for BSNL, the third such package offered by the government. Overall, the government has pumped in ₹3.22 trillion, or $39 billion, into the company, now India’s fourth largest telecom and internet services provider.