The Hindu Business Line : BSNL aims at 1 m broadband customers by year-end

BSNL hopes to increase its broadband customer base to 10 lakh by the year-end from 1.25 lakh currently, according to Mr A.K. Sinha, Chairman and Managing Director. BSNL launched broadband services on January 14 this year.

"We are on the cusp of big advances in this sector as the current fascination with broadband turns into a desire for ever faster services and are able to offer more and more applications," he said at Connect2005, an information, communication, and telecom event organised by CII and the Tamil Nadu Government.

BSNL also plans to introduce new wireless technologies to enable broadband services to be available through wireless media. To a limited extent the data services on the mobile will be available on GPRS (GeneralPacket Radio Service).

This will be further supplemented by EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GlobalEvolution) technology - a radio-based high-speed mobile data standard - in some of the major towns, he said.

BSNL has also sought additional spectrum for introducing 3G services. Its customers can look forward to the establishment of a public wireless access network with Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity, which allows one to connect to the Internet without wires) and Wi-Max (wireless technology that provides high-throughput broadband connections over long distances) deployments during the next fiscal.

For Wi-Fi, BSNL has identified 15 cities to deploy 300 hot spots such as airports, hotels, university campuses, and shopping malls. Work for Wi-Max will be undertaken in Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Delhi, and Mumbai, he said.

BSNL aims to achieve a subscriber base of 125 million by 2007. Out of a total of 100 million telephones in India, it has a customer base of 47 million, Mr Sinha said.

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