BSNL to keep private cellular operators at bay

He said BSNL refused to enter into roaming arragements with operators other than state-owned Mahanagar Telecom Nigam Ltd (MTNL) to protect business interests. ‘‘It is our USP, in fact,’’ said BSNL director, commercial, N.K. Mangla.

‘‘MTNL has got the rights, but no one else will get it for at least two years. BSNL has offered mobile services for only five years, while private operators have had nine years to build their network in rural areas. Why should we pact with them?’’ he added.

He said transparent billing and the network coverage were getting customers to migrate to BSNL over other operators. ‘‘That is the aim — we want people to leave other services and come to BSNL.’’

BSNL has 3.56 crore basic service (landline) customers, 50 lakh cellular customers and has rounded up some 33,000 broadband customers since the launch of the service in January.

It is also the biggest investor in telecom infrastructure, with a Rs 80,000 crore roll-out planned out for the next three years.

However, BSNL did not reach its subscriber target for broadband and cellular services in 2004-05.

Sinha also said, ‘‘There were delays in equipment procurement, which have now been sorted out. We will invest between Rs 75,000-80,000 crore over three years. The target is to reach 12.5 crore subscribers for telecom and broadband by then.’’

BSNL is likely to clock net profit of about Rs 7,000 crore in 2004-05, up from Rs 5,972 crore in 2003-04, Sinha said.

The telecom behemoth’s investments have paid dividends over the last three years. Investments worth Rs 35,000 crore to Rs 40,000 crore since 2002-03 have doubled its asset base to 100,000 crore, the CMD added.

BSNL is now proposed to merge it with MTNL, for which the modalities are being worked out by financial consultants.

Sinha said DoT would take a final call on the merger. ‘‘It is in the interest of the nation to synergise the operations of MTNL and BSNL, at least so that efforts in creating infrastructure are not duplicated,’’ he said.