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 BSNL Headquarters atNew Delhi | |
| Company type | Central Public Sector Undertaking |
|---|---|
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Founded | 15 September 2000; 25 years ago (2000-09-15) |
| Founder | Government of India |
| Headquarters | , India |
Area served | India Nepal (asMTNL) Mauritius (asMTML) |
Key people | Shri A. Robert J. Ravi,ITS (Chairman & MD)[1] |
| Services | |
| Revenue |  ₹23,427 crore (US$2.8 billion) (2025)[2] |
| ₹20,841 crore (US$2.5 billion) (2025)[2] | |
 ₹−2,247 crore (US$−270 million) (2025)[2] | |
| Total assets | ₹167,086 crore (US$20 billion) (2024)[2] |
| Total equity | ₹106,626 crore (US$13 billion) (2024)[2] |
| Owner | Department of Telecommunications,Ministry of Communications,Government of India |
| Members | 37Crore (September 2025)[3] |
Number of employees | 56,820 (as on 30 June 2024 as per RTI) |
| Divisions | |
| Subsidiaries | |
| Website | bsnl |
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (commonly known asBSNL) is an Indiancentral public sector undertaking, under theownership ofDepartment of Telecommunications, which is part of theMinistry of Communications, Government of India with its headquarters inNew Delhi, India. Thecentral public sector undertaking was established on 01-October-2000 by the Government of India. Its highest official is designated asChairperson andManaging Director, who is a central civil service group 'A' gazetted officer fromIndian Communication Finance Service cadre or central engineering service group 'A' gazetted officer fromIndian Telecommunication Service cadre. It provides mobile voice and internet services through its nationwidetelecommunications network across India. It is the largestgovernment-owned-wireless telecommunications service provider in India.[7]
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited is an Indiangovernment enterprise and its history can be traced back toBritish India. The foundation of the telecommunications network in India was laid by the British sometime during the 19th century. During the British era, the first telegraph line was established betweenKolkata and Diamond Harbour in 1850. The BritishEast India Company started using the telegraph in 1851 and until 1854 telegraph lines were laid across the country. In 1854, the telegraph service was opened to the public and the first telegram was sent from Mumbai to Pune. In 1885, theIndian Telegraph Act was passed by theBritish Imperial Legislative Council. After the bifurcation of the Post and Telegraph department in the 1980s, the creation ofDepartment of Telecom eventually led to the emergence of thegovernment owned telegraph and telephone enterprise which led to the foundation of BSNL.[8] Until early 2000s, BSNL is the only service provider forIndian Railways to control and administrative communication circuits later, they are separated asRailTel.
For 160 years, BSNL had operated the public telegram service. In 2010, the telex network between its 182 offices was replaced with the "Web-Based Telegram Messaging System" which relied on internet connections rather than telex lines (which are more reliable where power outages are more common). This led to a decline in service, and the company applied the title "diminished service" to telegrams in 2010. Finally, on 15-July-2013, the public telegram service was shut down completely.[9][10] BSNL also enjoys a part of revenue from the payments made for private players for recharge plans.
BSNL provides bothfixed line telephones andmobile telephony services on theGSM platform.
BSNL Mobile is a major provider ofGSM network services under the brand namesCellOne and BSNL all over India. It has wide network coverage in both urban and rural areas of India. It has over 121.82 million customers across India.[7]
BSNL Mobile offersprepaid,postpaid services and value-added services such as Free Phone Service (FPS), India Telephone Card (Prepaid card), Account Card Calling (ACC),Virtual Private Network (VPN), Tele-voting, Premium Rate Service (PRM). It also offers theIPTV which enables customers to watch television through the Internet and Voice and Video Over Internet Protocol (VVoIP).[11]
BSNL Landline was launched in the early 1990s. It was the only fixed-line telephone service for the whole country before the New Telecom Policy was announced by theDepartment of Telecom in 1999. Only the Government-owned BSNL and MTNL were allowed to provide land-line phone services throughcopper wire in the country. BSNL Landline is thelargest fixed-line telephony in India. It has over 9.55 million customers and 47.20% market share in the country as of 28 February 2021.[7]
BSNL is thefourth-largest ISP in India, having a presence throughout the country. It also has the largest Firebase telecom network in the country, around 7.5 lakh kilometers, among the four operators in the country.[12]
BSNL Broadband provides telecom services to enterprise customers including MPLS,P2P and Internet leased lines. It provides fixed-line services and landline usingCDMA technology and its own extensive optical fiber network. BSNL providesInternet access services through dial-up connections as prepaid,NetOne as postpaid, andDataOne asBSNL Broadband.[13][14]
BSNL Bharat Fiber (FTTH) was launched in February 2019. It offersTV over IP (IPTV),Video On-Demand (VoD),Voice over IP (VoIP), Audio On-Demand (AoD),Bandwidth On-Demand (BoD),remote education,video conferencing services, interactive gaming, and Virtual Private LAN services. BSNL has said that its optic fiber network provides fixed access to deliver high-speed Internet up to 300 Mbit/s.[15][16][17]
With effect to the government of India's policy decision to provide state-owned BSNL with another revival package worth 1.64 lakh crore rupees, the struggling PSU was merged with the Government's special purpose vehicleBBNL. This gave the struggling PSU a boost and an additional advantage of additional 5.67 lakh kilometers of optical fiber which has been laid across 1.85 lakh village panchayats in the country using the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF). Currently, it has an optical fibre cable network of over 6.83 lakh kilometres.
BSNL is the first telecom operator in India which started rolling out 4G service by using Mobile Broadband in 2009. In 2010 BWA auction, BSNL was allocated with 4G spectrum under 2300MHz Bandwidth (in all 20 telecom circles in India except Delhi & Mumbai because it is administered under MTNL network but MTNL also allocated with the same) which is also known as BWA or Broadband Wireless Access spectrum. It is initially used for WiMAX and later same is used for LTE service. BSNL was allocated with the spectrum by without participating in the BWA auction why because it is a state owned entity owing to which it has been provided with Auction Exception, So in order to acquire the spectrum, BSNL has to pay the equivalent amount that private telecom players paid for the same Bandwidth in the Auction to the Government. So, BSNL has provided 8,500 crores to the Government for this spectrum. MTNL also provided 1120 crores to the Government for the same. In the meanwhile other telecom players were using LTE technology to provide 4G services, BSNL alone used WiMAX technology to provide 4G service. But WiMAX technology is not accepted globally due to which the technology got failed to prove. So BSNL returned back all the 4G WiMAX technologies to the Government and brought back the investment amount due to heavy financial debt incurred at the time.[18] Reason behind the financial burden is because of its Legacy Systems and increasing pension to retired employees. Later in 2017-18 period BSNL provided 4G services in Few areas of India under Spectrum Reframing despite being not a proper 4G service. Under Make in India initiative, C-DOT (Centre for Development of Telemarics) developed the 4G core network for India. But the assembly segment was developed by Tejas Network (which was later brought byTATA) and the Government owned entity ITI (Indian Telephone Industries Limited).
BSNL started 4G service in some parts of India such as Bihar, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh in January 2019, but it is limited to a few cities and towns. Most of its 4G services are currently available in Southern India. However, BSNL is trying to launch pan India 4G services up to September 2022.[19][20] The telecom minister said that BSNL will launch its 4G services all over India on the 75th Independence Day of India along with various other projects.[21] BSNL is using 700 MHz and 2100 MHz bands to roll out the 4G services which can be upgraded to 5G in the future. BSNL has installed more than 40,000 plus 4G enabled and 5G ready towers.[22] On September 27, 2025, PM Narendra Modi launched BSNL's Swadeshi 4G Network and commissioned 97500 towers developed indigenously.[23][24]
On behalf of the government of India, the Minister of CommunicationsAshwini Vaishnaw announced that the State-Owned Telco would start its 5G operations by 15 August 2023. He also added that the 4G and 5G network of the state-ownedBSNL would be a completely home-grown indigenous 4G and 5G network technology; thus, emphasizing more on Govt. of India'sAtmanirbhar Bharat.[25][26][27][28]
In November 2024, BSNL introduced and made a trial of the newDirect-to-Device technology for the first time in India in partnership with VIASAT. This technology enables users to communicate without transversing a Base Station or Core Network. This technology is used in direct interaction between5G-enabled devices to connect seamlessly to both terrestrial and satellite coverage.[29]
On 28 May 2013, BSNL launched "Internet Data Centre – Managed Cloud Services". This includes computation, software, data access and storage services for individuals as well as enterprises.[30]
Services include:
On 16 August 2018, BSNL launched "BSNL Wings Services" in22 telecom circles, in which there is no need for aSIM card orFTTH as it is aVoIP service through an app.[31] It offers unlimited free calling for one year throughout India.[32]
BSNL is primarily divided into three vertical divisions:
Other than these three vertical divisions, there are electrical wings and civil wings, which take care of real estate monetization.
Horizontally, BSNL is divided into several administrative units, variously known as telecom circles, metro districts, project circles and specialized units. It has 24 telecom circles, two metro districts, six project circles, four maintenance regions, five telecom factories, three training institutions and four specialized telecom units.[33] Each circle is headed by a Chief General Manager (CGM) who is an officer of Indian Telecom Service (ITS).
The organizational structure of BSNL is as follows: Chief General Manager being the head of the Circle who is the officer of HAG+ level, assisted by three or four Principal General Manager (PGM) who are the officer of grade HAG. The districts over a circle is being headed by the designations as General Manager officer of grade of SAG who looks over around two to four districts, while where the connections are less and the smaller district is being headed by Telecom District Manager (TDM) Officer of the grade of JAG and Telecom Divisional Engineer (TDE) officer of STS grade, all the officers above the post of TDE (including TDE) are of Group A, and they are the officers of grade of Indian Telecom Service (ITS) directly or promotive. Then the Group B consists of Additional Divisional Engineer, Sub Divisional Engineer and Junior Telecom officer and then the organization has Group C and D employees.
On 24-October-2019, the Government of India announced a revival package for BSNL andMTNL which includes monetizing assets, raising funds,TD-LTE spectrum, and a voluntary retirement scheme for employees. Apart from the package, theMinistry of Communications has decided to merge MTNL with BSNL. Pending this, MTNL will be a wholly ownedsubsidiary of BSNL.[5][34][35][36]
On 24-October-2019, the Government of India announced a revival package for BSNL and has given its agreement to an in-principle merger (operational merger, i.e., only the operations ofMTNL and BSNL would be merged, and they would be managed by BSNL) for MTNL and BSNL[37]
On 27-July-2022, the Government of India announced another revival package for the state-owned BSNL, for providing 4G and 5G services making thePSU more viable and vibrant and turning it into a profit making organization; under this policy decision the government also mergedBBNL with BSNL.[6]
In 2012Nikhil Thakur, a hacker and Internet activist, broke into the Madhya Pradesh BSNL website and later on hacked the India BSNL website.[38][39]
In July 2017, BSNL suffered a cyberattack, inKarnataka, when malware affected the telco's broadband network using modems with default passwords.[40] The virus reportedly affected 60,000 modems and blocked their internet connectivity. Later, BSNL issued an advisory notice to its broadband customers, urging them to change their default router username and passwords.[41]
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