BSNL Could Be a Serious Threat to Reliance Jio, Find Out How

By Prajith

| Published: Thursday, October 13, 2016, 14:20 [IST]

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'd know about how Reliance Jio's 4G services have changed the telecom market scene in the country.

BSNL Could Be a Serious Threat to Reliance Jio, Find Out How

It's already been a month since the Mukesh Ambani-led Jio introduced its 'Welcome offer' in the country and people are still going crazy to get their hands on the Jio SIM. And why not, after all, it's offering unprecedented offers in the form of free 4G data, unlimited voice calls, and much more.

While other telcos are showering discounts and offers on the existing tariff plans, BSNL, the state-owned telco is taking a different approach to dethrone the Reliance Jio for good.

Recently, at the Spectrum auction 2016, major telcos in the country like Idea, Vodafone, and Airtel acquired huge amounts of spectrum airwaves to withstand the stiff competition coming from the Reliance Jio's end.

BSNL, on the other hand, was mum during the auction and made it clear that it'll strengthen its existing infrastructure before acquiring any additional spectrum airwaves.

Yesterday, multiple publications reported that BSNL is "strengthening its infrastructure by pumping funds into various areas of expansions and developments."

Here's how BSNL could be a serious threat to Reliance Jio.

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Installation of new mobile towers

The state-owned telco is planning to install new mobile towers in the Left-Wing Extremist states which include Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Telangana to strengthen its presence.

GSM expansion project

Under the GSM expansion project, BSNL is planning to install 20,000 BTS (Base Transceiver Station) this fiscal to improve its service quality. It is said that most of these towers would be installed between now and March.

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More Wi-Fi hotspots in the country

BSNL currently has around 2,700 hotspots located in the country and is planning to increase this number to 40,000 Wi-Fi hotspots by March 2018.

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Opex and Capex Model

For the uninitiated, in the ‘Opex model,' Wi-Fi hotspots are created by franchisees who will install, manage, and run the sites for a five-year time period. Hotspots created by the ‘Capex model', on the other hand, will be owned by BSNL itself.

You may be wondering how is it going to matter? Let us explain. Whenever BSNL users connect to one of these hotspots, "the data session will be seamlessly transferred to the Wi-Fi hotspot" thereby providing high-speed internet (as a part of the data package).

How is this going to have an impact on Reliance

From the above, it's clear that BSNL is putting in all the efforts to dethrone BSNL and its intentions to install Wi-Fi hotspots in the country only corroborates it. If things go as planned for BSNL, Reliance Jio has to seriously consider upping its game.

That being said, at this point of time, we cannot really say if BSNL is going to defeat Jio in the ongoing telecom war. But, we wish BSNL good luck for the future!

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