BSNL gunning for over 50% market share by 2007

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) is targeting a marketshare of 50-55% to achieve its share of 120 million phone connections out of the 250 million phone connections target by 2007 announced by the government.

Government has set an ambitious target of increasing the total number of fixed and mobile phone connections in India to 250 million by 2007 from about 95 million now. BSNL operates all across the country except Delhi and Mumbai. Private operators have to provide 125 million connections if the target of 250 million connections is to be achieved.

BSNL is also working on achieving rural tele-density of 3% from the current 1.6% by 2007. As per the current progress, BSNL is hoping to achieve a rural tele-density of two per cent by 2005-end.

BSNL is undertaking massive expansion plans for its mobile and CDMA based fixed wireless services as CDMA based fixed wireless service offers the advantage of greater last mile reach that is considered extremely crucial in rural areas. BSNL already has a two million capacity of CDMA based fixed wireless lines that have capability of 14.4 kbps data rate.

BSNL also has plans to expand this base by a further one million lines through CDMA 2001x that offers data rates up to 144 kbps. Most of these lines are planned to be deployed in rural areas. In the next phase of its mobile expansion, BSNL plans to go in for 15 million more GSM lines of which order for 12 million has already been placed.

This network will adopt edge-based GSM technology which provides data rates upto 384 kbps and will support applications such as streaming video.