Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has very aggressive Wi-Fi hotspot deployment plans and is targeting 40,000 – 45,000 Wi-Fi hotspots pan-India by March 2018.
Speaking about Wi-Fi hotspot deployment plan, Anupam Shrivastava, CMD, BSNL said, “BSNL is targeting 40,000 – 45,000 Wi-Fi hotspots by March 2018 from a base of 5,200 as on March 31, 2017.”
The company plans to achieve 40,000 – 45,000 Wi-Fi hotspots through revenue share model through its three partners, installation of own Wi-Fi hotspots through Capex model and through government aided project through USO (Universal Service Obligation) Fund added Shrivastava.
As part of its drive to tap new sources of revenue while meeting aspirations of the government, BSNL has introduced Wi-Fi model based on revenue sharing to deploy public Wi-Fi hotspots across the country covering all religious, tourist and important locations pan-India.
On the revenue sharing front, QuadGen Wireless has got exclusive rights to set up Wi-Fi hotspots in 9 states and is focused on Southern and Western region. QuadGen Wireless is deploying Wi-Fi hotspots in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh. Trimax IT Infrastructure and Services has got exclusive rights for Northern region and is focusing on states like Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Chandigarh, GoIP Global Services has got exclusive rights for four Eastern states/UTs like Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam and Andaman & Nicobar.
In the Capex model, BSNL plans to install 70,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in two phases. Here, L&T has bagged Northern and Southern region whereas HFCL has bagged Western and Eastern region says Anupam Shrivastava.
In the Wi-Fi Capex model, BSNL is deploying Elitecore core architecture so that there is uniformity in network architecture.
BSNL has also bagged an order to install 25,000 hotspots through USO Fund as rural exchanges are already connected by OFC in BharatNet Project. In this case, USO Administrator has sanctioned an amount of Rs. 942 cores and Wi-Fi hotspots is planned to be implanted in 6 months.
The three business models will definitely help BSNL to reach closer to its Wi-Fi hotspot target of 40,000 – 45,000 by March 2018.
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