BSNL broadband service in Gujarat  ( January '27,2005, FE)

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) is set to launch its broadband services in Gujarat from February. After the formal announcement of the launch on January 14, the state-owned telecom service provider will offer high-speed internet access facilities to its subscribers in Gujarat. It will extend additional services of audio/video conferencing, bandwidth on demand, multicasting and content-based services to its subscribers and BSNL (Gujarat) will invest in excess of Rs 12 crore in setting up the equipment for the services.

Speaking to FE, chief general manager (Gujarat circle) Ashok Kumar Bhandari informed, “The broadband services of BSNL will be operational between February and March 2005 in Gujarat and the implementation process will be carried out in two phases. In the initial stage, we will be providing the service of high-speed internet access to users in 19 cities across the state. With the growing demand in other service areas of BSNL in Gujarat, we intend to extend additional services to subscribers. The broadband service will offer 256 kilobytes per second (kbps) internet speed to the users at Rs 500 per month.”

Currently, the broadband service of BSNL is available in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata. BSNL will invest in excess of Rs 12 crore for putting up access equipment that will help establish the broadband network in Gujarat.

At a later stage, BSNL intends to increase the speed from 256 kbps to 8 megabytes per second (mbps) that will enable the subscribers to access additional services of video-on-demand, interactive gaming and live and time shifted television. For its services, BSNL will offer separate tariff packages for home and business subscribers across the country.

The broadband service will be functional through Multi Protocol Label Switching based IP infrastructure. It will consist of different sizes of Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexers which represent first point of presence for broadband customers. They are connected to Local Area Network switches, which aggregate the traffic coming from all DSLAMs. Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line technology will allow the subscribers to simultaneously surf the internet and have a phone conversation.

With its broadband service in place, BSNL aims to provide virtual private network service and introduce pre-paid and post-paid broadband services to its subscribers.