BSNL to add 100 million lines within 2 years

Bangalore, Jun 5: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) will add a capacity of 100 million land lines by 2010, including 25 million in South, BSNL CMD Kuldeep Goyal said today.

Speaking to reporters after the function held to handover the ISO 9001-2000 Certification to the Karnataka Telecom Circle, he said, "We are in the process of inviting tenders for 93 million lines." Stating that in South the BSNL business was not upto the mark, Mr Goyal said once the Capacity building programme was launched the situation would improve.

"The Board which recently met at Gurgaon had decided to go ahead with the Capacity building programme and it will be implemented soon and five million new lines will be provided in South within next six month period, he said" He said that BSNL at present had 22 per cent market share in the country with 308 million connections and it had targeted to touch 30 per cent market share within next two years.

Earlier, speaking at the function, Mr Goyal said that in Broadband connection BSNL has taken lead with 42 per cent market share in 2007-08 and it aimed to garner 50 per cent market share by adding three million more subscribers this year.

"By 2010 we want to have 10 million Broadband connections," he said.

He said that last year BSNL had earned Rs 700 crore through value added services and this was targeted to cross Rs 2000 crore mark by 2010.

"To achieve this it was proposed to introduce Managed Network service targeting Corporate Sector. Under this BSNL would provide connection as well as manage the line there by customer need not to worry about management of the network service," he said BSNL Karnataka Telecom Circle Chief General Manager T S Kuppusawmy, in his address said that Karnataka Circle was the first to get ISO 9001-2000 certification.

"This adds more responsibility to maintain and improve the level of quality of service provided to the customers. The level of quality has to be on improving front and not stagnent after having received the Certification," he said.

Due to various reasons, including litigations, in Cellular sector no progress was made in Karnataka since last two years, but now the capacity would be increased to 17 lakhs by September from 13 lakhs at present and 18 lakhs by end of this calender year.

UNI