BSNL plans to deploy 200 4G towers everyday on final deployment: Ashwini Vaishnaw

Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are aggressively expanding the reach of their 5G connectivity in India. At a time, when the two telecom giants are working on making their 5G services available to their subscribers across the country, state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is working on deploying its 4G services in various parts of the country. The company recently started the pilot program to deploy its 4G services in parts of Punjab and it has already deployed 135 of the 200 telecom towers in the state. It is likely to complete deploying rest of the towers soon.

After the deployment is complete, the state-run telecom operator will test its telecom stack for a period of three months as a part of the pilot plan before it starts large scale deployment in various parts of the country.

On the sidelines of this development, Minister of Railways, Communications and Electronics and Information Technology (IT), Ashwini Vaishnaw has said that once the pilot program is successful, the company will deploy 200 towers a day for enhancing 4G deployment in the country.

“We have already started deploying 200 towers based on India telecom stack, while nearly 135 sites are already complete…We’ll test for another three months, and ramp up to 200 towers per day,” the minister said in a statement to the Economic Times Telecom.

He also said that a rapid roll out of 4G telecom sites has already been planned for August. This means that if the pilot program, which the minister says includes real customers in a physical environment, goes well, BSNL will finally start deploying its 4G services in India.

In addition to talking about 4G services, Vaishnaw also talked about BSNL’s plans of deploying 5G services. He told the publication that the 4G equipment deployed by BSNL will be used for providing 5G services. The company will roll out a software update that will upgrade its 4G stack to offer 5G services.

That said, the Department of Telcom (DoT) is yet to get approval from the empowered group of ministers (EGoM) for the deployment of one lakh 4G towers by the state-run telecom company. This approval is necessary for the company to release a purchase order to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) that has developed indigenous 4G stack for the company.

It is worth noting that back in November 2022, TCS and ITI Limited had submitted their bids for deploying one lakh 4G telecom towers across four zones in the country. BSNL’s board recommended TCS for the purpose back in February this year.