The telecom industry has been divided into two major segments, that is, fixed and wireless cellular services for this report. Besides, internet services, VAS, PMRTS and VSAT also have been discussed in brief in the report.
In today’s information
age, the telecommunication industry has a vital role to play. Considered as the
backbone of industrial and economic development, the industry has been aiding
delivery of voice and data services at rapidly increasing speeds, and thus, has
been revolutionising human communication.
Although the Indian
telecom industry is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, the
current teledensity or telecom penetration is extremely low when compared with
global standards. India’s teledensity of 36.98% in FY09 is amongst the lowest
in the world. Further, the urban teledensity is over 80%, while rural
teledensity is less than 20%, and this gap is increasing. As majority of the
population resides in rural areas, it is important that the government takes
steps to improve rural teledensity. No doubt the government has taken certain
policy initiatives, which include the creation of the Universal Service
Obligation Fund, for improving rural telephony. These measures are expected to
improve the rural tele-density and bridge the rural-urban gap in tele-density.
Evolution
Indian telecom sector is
more than 165 years old. Telecommunications was first introduced in India in
1851 when the first operational land lines were laid by the government near Kolkata
(then Calcutta), although telephone services were formally introduced in India
much later in 1881. Further, in 1883, telephone services were merged with the
postal system. In 1947, after India attained independence, all foreign
telecommunication companies were nationalised to form the Posts, Telephone and
Telegraph (PTT), a body that was governed by the Ministry of Communication. The
Indian telecom sector was entirely under government ownership until 1984, when
the private sector was allowed in telecommunication equipment manufacturing
only. The government concretised its earlier efforts towards developing R&D
in the sector by setting up an autonomous body – Centre for Development of
Telematics (C-DOT) in 1984 to develop state-of-the-art telecommunication
technology to meet the growing needs of the Indian telecommunication network.
The actual evolution of the industry started after the Government separated the
Department of Post and Telegraph in 1985 by setting up the Department of Posts
and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
The entire evolution of
the telecom industry can be classified into three distinct phases.
- Phase I- Pre-Libralisation Era (1980-89)
- Phase II- Post Libralisation Era (1990-99)
- Phase III- Post 2000
Until the late 90s the
Government of India held a monopoly on all types of communications – as a
result of the Telegraph Act of 1885. As mentioned earlier in the chapter, until
the industry was liberalised in the early nineties, it was a heavily government-controlled
and small-sized market, Government policies have played a key role in shaping
the structure and size of the Telecom industry in India. As a result, the
Indian telecom market is one of the most liberalised market in the world with
private participation in almost all of its segments. The New Telecom Policy
(NTP-99) provided the much needed impetus to the growth of this industry and
set the trend for libralisation in the industry.
Company
Profile ( BSNL )
Growth Drivers &
Challenges
Currently, free fall
in voice call charges has undoubtedly impacted the revenues. In the present
scenario of the tariff war BSNL has no option but to match the market trend.
However, we expect that there will be a surge in voice traffic due to reduced
rates which will compensate the dip in revenue to some extent. As pricing of
any service cannot ignore the basic underlying costs on a long run, we are of
the opinion that sooner or later, tariffs will stabilise at some sustainable
point.
Biggest revenue drivers
for BSNL are Broadband, 3G and Value Added Services on Broadband and Mobile.
At present, value added service contribute to approximately 8% of mobile
revenues. With increased focus on mobile broadband and multimedia services on
3G, supported by Mobile Advertising and Mobile Banking & Commerce
Services, BSNL’s revenue may get a boost. We have also started sharing our
passive infrastructure with other operators as another revenue earning
stream.
Mr. K Goyal
Chairperson and Managing Director
|
|
About the Company
Bharat Sanchar Nigam
Ltd (BSNL) was established in the year 2000 by the GoI. The company provides
a wide range of telecom services in India. It has telecom training institutes
which have been accredited with ISO 9000 quality certification. The company
has also received National Energy Conservation Award in 2008-09 for the 2nd
time in a row from Bureau of Energy Efficiency. BSNL has been one of the
first service providers in India to launch 3G services across 284 cities as
on November 30th, 2009. The company currently serves more than 55% of the
broadband services market in India.
Areas of Operation
BSNL provides a wide
range of services including landine, cellular (GSM and CDMA), Managed
Services Network, MPLS VPN, VSAT, VoIP, VAS, audio, video and web
conferencing, internet and broadband services among others. The company
provides Internet services, under the brand name Sancharnet, through various
modes that include Wi-Fi, Broadband, Direct Internet Access (DIAS), ISDN and
PSTN dial-up services. The company also carries on activities of planning,
installing, network integration and maintenance of switching and transmission
networks.
The company operates
through 26 circles all over India except Mumbai and Delhi. With services in
around 0.55 mn village, 7330 cities/towns and 602 districts, BSNL has a major
presence in rural areas. The company has in-house production units in Mumbai,
Jabalpur, Richhai, Bhilai, Kolkata, Gopalpur and Kharagpur engaged in the
production of GSM tower, SIM cards, Pay Phones, Mini Pillar, MPJ box, CT
boxes, Line Jack units, Drop-wire units etc. The National Internet Backbone
(NIB) of the company has 432 points of presence and provides Internet service
to approximately 1 mn dial-up customers including about 3.5 mn customers on
CLI (caller line identity) basis. This network helps the company transport IP
traffic to every corner of the country.
Connections; Capacity
and Subscriber Base Equipped Capacity
Working Connections /
Subscribers
Transmission System
(as on September 30th, 2008)
As on November 30th,
2009 the total number of villages and cities covered by mobile services stood
at 346,878 and 23,924 respectively.
Ongoing Projects
In the first phase
BSNL plans to cover 1000 Block Headquarters across the country out of which
32 Block Headquarters in Rajasthan will be covered. This will provide high
speed wireless broadband connectivity to 11,500 Common Service Centers in
respective Blocks. Through this technology, BSNL has planned to cover the
remaining Block Headquarters for connecting 50,000 Common Service Centers in
next Phase. This project is being supported by Department of Information
Technology, Govt. of India.
Future Plans
Source
:https://www.dnb.co.in/
|
|
Namdev Pratap is Engineering student ,he is an active blogger and a Space enthusiast, He has Involved in many theoretical research in astronomy and space science,he has served as Volunteer for SETI Home for a period of 5 years in BOINC(Berkley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing).
ConversionConversion EmoticonEmoticon