The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : BSNL on major expansion drive

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jun 21, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

BSNL on major expansion drive

By Suresh Krishnamoorthy

HYDERABAD, JUNE 20. The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited is putting to work a capital expenditure plan of Rs. 1,200 crores. It includes infrastructure improvement and capacity upgradation of not only fixed line and mobile telephony, but also taking of broadband Internet connectivity to all over the State.

Speaking to The Hindu, the BSNL's Chief General Manager (Andhra Pradesh), Sanjaya Kumar, has said the effort was to take tele-density in the State from the existing 4.86 connections per 100 people to at least 20 per 100. The tele-density includes fixed, Wireless in Local Loop (WLL) and mobile telephones.

As far as cellular services are concerned, BSNL's equipped capacity for the State is 5,96,000 and as of now, 5,77,596 are working, covering 145 towns, 4,000 villages and 3,206 km of highway route. The CellOne services of the BSNL have risen to the number two position in the State within one year of its introduction in October/November, 2002.

The expansion plan includes addition of just over 11 lakh mobile connections, both the post-paid ones under the brand name `CellOne' and the pre-paid variety `Excel'. According to the schedule, work for which is progressing at a hectic pace, 1.32 lakh mobile lines will be added and operationalised by the end of this month and 80,000 more by end of August, covering 11 new cities in the State, says Mr. Kumar. During December 2004/January 2005, another 9.63 lakh CellOne lines will be added.

If that is so for the cellular services working on the Global Standard for Mobile Communication (GSM) technique, the WLL phones that have the Code Division Multiple Access technology, have also been doing well. As against an equipped capacity of 1,29,500 lines, there are 70,638 working connections, including 30,933 (urban) and 39,705 (rural). The WLL phones cover seven cities of Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Guntur, Warangal, Tirupati and Chittoor and 18 districts. On the fixed line front, there are 31,58,272 working connections as against an equipped capacity of 40,94,365 connections.

Asked about the reasons for CellOne's rising popularity, Mr. Sanjaya Kumar says: "We are the only cellular service providers offering a 15-second pulse, free roaming and the maximum talk time on Excel pre-paid cards. Of the Rs. 1,200 crores, more than Rs. 400 crores will go for mobile connectivity with the rest being used for improved fixed line telephony and increasing broadband Internet connectivity.

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