BSNL’s future is up for a serious call today!

India’s one of the biggest mobile operator, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), a state-owned telecommunication company, is going through its roughest patch yet. The Union Cabinet today is expected to take a call on a proposal by the Telecom Department to save the company.

The proposal is to skim off the assets of all 65,000 BSNL mobile towers to another entirely public owned subsidiary company.

As per a top government official, the idea of restructuring the loss making BSNL, monetize its infrastructure and improve its operations and maintenance is on the agenda of Union Cabinet today.

Some highly placed government officials, requesting anonymity, confirmed that the new subsidiary company could be valued at Rs 20,000 crores while the operations and maintenance of the mobile towers could be outsourced.

BSNL, the government owned Telecom Company, in terms of expansion, comes after Indus Towers- a joint venture between private telecom operators including Airtel, Vodafone and Idea which runs the largest network.

The purpose behind drawing off BSNL tower infrastructure to another company is to streamline the functioning and improve the quality. At the same time, the operator would earn new revenues by way of tenancy of towers.

The move will also let private investors get involved and operate the BSNL mobile network on lease instead of investing in the set-up of a separate network tower.