Government Planning to Merge BBNL with BSNL

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Government Planning to Merge BBNL with BSNL
21 Mar 2022
6 min read

News Synopsis

According to a senior official, the government of India is planning to merge Bharat Broadband Nigam Limited (BBNL) with the deficit state-rum telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) this month.

PK Purwar, Chairman and managing director of BSNL, said at a recent event hosted by the All India Graduate Engineers and Telecom officers Association (AIGETOA)  that the government is giving telecom companies an opportunity to turn around. 

Under the proposal, BSNL will get 5.67 lakh kilometres of optical fibre which has been laid across 1.85 lakh village panchayats in India with the use of the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).

Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) BBNL was established in February 2012 to layout an optical fibre network in 2.5 lakh village panchayats across India, with USOF and give access to all telecom operators on a non-discriminatory basis.

However, BBNL officials said that BSNL has a history of failing to implement the Bharat Net project, and even though the SPV has already paid the state telecommunications company, the seller still pays the commission. So the company has stated that their staff is not in favour of the proposed merger.

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