The name Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited derives from Hindi, which means Indian Communications Corporation Limited in English.
History
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, is the India's oldest communication company and its history can be traced back to the British India. The foundation of telecom network in India was laid by the British sometime in 19th century. During the British era, 1850; the first telegraph line, was established between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour. The British East India Company started using the telegraph in 1851 and till 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, the Indian Telegraph Act was passed by the British Imperial Legislative Council. After the bifurcation of Post and Telegraph department in 1980s, The creation of Department of Telecom eventually led to the emergence of the State owned telegraph and telephone company which led to foundation of BSNL. It continued the telegraph services in India until it shut down telegraph services completely on 15 July 2013. After providing it for 160 years, BSNL discontinued its telegraph service on 15 July 2013. It began delivering telegrams to the public in February 1855; this service was upgraded to a web-based messaging system in 2010 and had been offered through 182 telegraph offices across India.
is a major provider of GSM network under brand name CellOne all over India. It has wide network coverage in both urban and rural areas of India. It has over 120.42 million customers across India. BSNL Mobile offers prepaid, postpaid services and value-added services such as Free Phone Service, India Telephone Card, Account Card Calling, Virtual Private Network, Tele-voting, Premium Rate Service. It also offers the IPTV which enables customers to watch television through the Internet and Voice and Video Over Internet Protocol.
BSNL Landline
BSNL Landline was launched in early 1990s. It was the only fixed-line telephone serving for whole country before the New Telecom Policy was announced by Department of Telecom in 1999. Only the Government-owned BSNL and MTNL were allowed to provide land-line phone services through copper wire in India. BSNL Landline is the largest fixed-line telephony in India. It has over 10.41 million customers and 49.34% market share in India.
Internet
BSNL is the fourth largest ISP in India, with having presence throughout the country. It also has the largest fibre-based telecom network in India around 7.5 lakh kilometers among the four operators in the country.
BSNL Broadband provides a complete telecom services solution to enterprise customers including MPLS, P2P and Internet leased lines. It provides fixedline services and landline using CDMA technology and its own extensive optical fiber network. BSNL provides Internet access services through dial-up connections as prepaid, NetOne as Postpaid and DataOne as BSNL Broadband.
Bharat Fiber
Bharat Fiber was launched in February 2019. It offers TV over IP, Video On-Demand, Audio On-Demand, Bandwidth On-Demand, Remote Education, Video Conferencing Services, Interactive Gaming, Virtual Private LAN services. BSNL said that, its huge optic fiber network provides fix access to deliver high speed internet ranging from 256 kbit/s to 100 Mbit/s.
IP services
BSNL Wing Services
On 16 August 2018, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited has launched "BSNL Wings Services" in 22 telecom circles. In which, there is no need of SIM card or cable wiring as is a VoIP service through an app. It offers unlimited free calling for one year throughout India.
Administrative units
BSNL vertical divisions
BSNL is primarily divided into three verticals
BSNL - Consumer Fixed Access, wire line and broadband business
BSNL - Consumer Mobility, wireless business, primarily 3G GSM services. WLL services which were widely deployed are being phased out
BSNL - Enterprise Business, Enterprise customers on turnkey basis
Other than these three verticals, there are electrical wings and civil wings which takes care of real estate monetization also.
BSNL horizontal divisions
Horizantally, BSNL is divided into a number of 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. Each circle is being headed by the Chief General Manager who is an officer of Indian Telecom Service. The organisational 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 who is 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 Officer of the grade of JAG and Telecom Divisional Engineer officer of STS grade, all the officers above the post of TDE are of Group A and they are the officers of grade of Indian Telecom Service directly or promotive. Then the Group B consists of Additional Divisional Engineer, Sub Divisional Engineer and Junior Telecom officer and then the organisation has Group C and D employees.
Merger and Acquisitions
On the 24th of October 2019, the Government of India announced revival package for BSNL and MTNL which includes monetising assets, raising funds, TD-LTEspectrum, voluntary retirement scheme for employees. Apart from package, Ministry of Communications decided to merge MTNL with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited. Pending this, MTNL will be subsidiary of BSNL.
Controversies
Cyber Attack
In July 2017, BSNL had a cyber attack which affected south India, especially Karnataka, when a malware affected Telco's broadband network using a modem having default passwords. This virus reportedly affected 60,000 modems and blocked internet connectivity. Later BSNL issued an advisory notice to its broadband customers, urging them to change their default router username and passwords.
