MYSURU, June 18: Telecom major BSNL will set up 40,000 Wi-Fi Hotspots in the country to counter its inadequacy in providing 4G data services, BSNL Chairman and Managing Director Anupam Srivastava said today.
Talking to newsmen here, he said that “We are at present neither a 4G service provider, nor do we have the relevant spectrum to launch this service. But to deal with this challenge, we are working on a scheme to set up 40,000 Wi-Fi Hotspots in the country, as it (Wi-Fi Hotspot) is faster than 4G services during the next two year period.
Mr Srivastava launched the Mobile Date Offload (MDO) services in South India. It was faster than 4G services provided by other private providers in the country. The southern zone consists of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Mr Srivastava said under the scheme, 2500 Wi-Fi Hotspots have been set up in the country, and the company plans to increase them to 21,000 in the current financial year. He apprised that in order to improve its telecom service, the BSNL would be setting up around 25,000 mobile towers in the country, with an investment of Rs 5,500 crores. Mr Srivastava said that as compared to all other private operators BSNL is the least indebted company in the industry. Also pointing out that BSNL’s ‘MNP’ ratio has become positive, “Each month almost 1.5 to two million customers are adding to our network which used to be less than 1 million…. So that’s how our customer base is also rising,” he said.
Noting that BSNL has now put its act together, he said that “We missed the voice bus, we do not want to miss the data bus. Data is the future of our organisation and we don’t want to lose that.” (UNI)
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