BSNL will be rolling out the 4G services from January next throughout Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and within six months or by June, the coverage will be total after initially starting the service in a few select cities.
The agency will also be spending ₹400 crore for establishing 1,150 towers of which 550 will be in Telangana and rest in Andhra Pradesh, and will also be upgrading existing towers to enable transmission of 4G signals, said Chief General Manager of Telangana, L. Anantharam, at a press conference here on Tuesday.
Customers can also look forward to speedier internet broadband connectivity with the BSNL reconfiguring its towers to bring the technology closer to the homes and help increase the speeds from current 2Mbps to 4Mbps within the next few months.
Throughout both the Telugu States, new state of art 1013 2G base transceiver stations will be installed in place of existing old equipment in several places of Rangareddy, Mahabubnagar, Khammam, Srikakulam, Vizianagaram, and parts of Chittoor. Another 1,282 towers to expand 3G transmissions will be set up to cover important villages, educational institutions, pilgrim centres, etc.Terming 2016-17 as a very “successful year”, Mr. Anantharam said the combined AP circle revenue was ₹2,526.18 crore against ₹2,463.90 crore showing a growth of 2.53% overall and for mobile - ₹1,475.86 crore as against ₹1,405 crore the year before showing 5% growth.
Having little over 99 lakh mobile connections, BSNL has added 22.72 lakh pre-paid connections grabbing the second position in the country and registering a growth of 36.4% (16.66 lakh in 2015-16). It had also gained 32,018 customers through number portability by gaining 2.78 lakh and losing out 2.46 lakh. Telangana Police and Health Department have begun to use the common user group connections of 47,000 and 27,000, respectively. The CGM said even landline connections showed an upward trend with 1.70 lakh new connections or a 6.86% high comparatively and this was the highest in last four years!
Offers
Installation charges have been waived off for reconnection of closed landline and broadband connections and in addition a free pre-paid card will be provided for customers. Offer is valid till June 15.
Other attractive offers are free 310MB data on new connections on all prepaid mobile plans till May 29 and 1GB free data to 12 lakh prepaid BSNL customers using smartphone yet not using data services.
