abhishreshthaa
Abhijeet S
BSNL (BHARAT SANCHAR NIGAM LIMITED)
Type Communication Service Provider
Availability Countrywide except Delhi & Mumbai
Revenue
US$ 9.04 billion (2006)
Owner The Government of India
Key people Kuldeep Goyal(CEO)
Founded 19th century, incorporated 2000
Website www.bsnl.co.in
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (known as BSNL, India Communications Corporation Limited) is a public sector communications company in India. It is the India's largest telecommunication company with 25.14% market share as on December 31, 2007. Its headquarters are at Bharat Sanchar Bhawan, Harish Chandra Mathur Lane, Janpath, New Delhi. It has the status of Mini-ratna - a status assigned to reputed Public Sector companies in India.
BSNL is India's oldest and largest Communication Service Provider (CSP).
Currently BSNL has a customer base of 68.5 million (Basic & Mobile telephony). It has footprints throughout India except for the metropolitan cities of Mumbai and New Delhi which are managed by MTNL. As on December 31, 2007 BSNL commanded a customer base of 31.7 million Wireline, 4.1 million CDMA-WLL and 32.7 million GSM Mobile subscribers.
BSNL's earnings for the Financial Year ending March 31, 2007 stood at INR 397.15b (US$ 9.67 b) with net profit of INR 78.06b (US$ 1.90 billion). Today, BSNL is India's largest Telco and one of the largest Public Sector Undertaking with estimated market value of $ 100 Billion. The company is planning an IPO with in 6 months to offload 10 % to public.
History
The foundation of Telecom Network in India was laid by the British sometime in 19th century. The history of BSNL is linked with the beginning of Telecom in India. In 19th century and for almost entire 20th century, the Telecom in India was operated as a Government of India wing. Earlier it was part of erstwhile Post & Telegraph Department (P&T). In 1975 the Department of Telecom (DoT) was separated from P&T.
DoT was responsible for running of Telecom services in entire country until 1985 when Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) was carved out of DoT to run the telecom services of Delhi and Mumbai. It is a well known fact that BSNL was carved out of Department of Telecom to provide level playing field to private telecoms.
Subsequently in 1990s the telecom sector was opened up by the Government for Private investment, therefore it became necessary to separate the Government's policy wing from Operations wing. The Government of India corporatised the operations wing of DoT on October 01, 2000 and named it as Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL).BSNL operates as a public sector.