The Hindu Business Line : BSNL plans Rs 250-cr investment to expand mobile services in Karnataka

The general manager for mobile services, Mr M.C. Kalkura, told Business Line that the cell cities (base stations) would be doubled to over 1,500 and 200 more towns would be covered before March 2005. This will increase the switch capacity to around 15 lakh. Currently, the subscriber base for BSNL in Karnataka is around 3.6 lakh.

Mr Kalkura said totally around 500 towns and cities would be covered before the end of the current fiscal once the current expansion is completed. A network exchange, which can take up to 1 million BHCA (busy hour call attempts), has been set up in Hyderabad and will be operational within few weeks. This exchange will add capacity to accept calls of pre-paid subscribers. "We were not able to distribute more SIM cards because the new exchange had not been set up," Mr Kalkura said.

In Bangalore alone, there are 183 cell sites and the problem of call drops has substantially decreased. It is less than 1 per cent now. Another 17 cell sites will be added in Bangalore soon.

Mr Kalkura said said complaints over billings had also been taken care of. "We no longer have any outstanding issues on billings."

BSNL will soon provide GPRS for its subscribers apart from marketing services like bundling tariff plans with mobile phones. He said during 2003-04, around Rs 130 crore had been invested in increasing the switching capacity by around 3.8 lakh while 230 more cell sites had been added. Around 122 more towns had been covered increasing the coverage to 290 towns and cities. During the current fiscal, 17 million more connections will be provided all over the country making it the largest service provider in the country. In South India alone, 4 million more subscribers will be added during the fiscal.

BSNL had earlier said Karnataka would get 8 lakh more SIM cards during the current fiscal out of the 10 million more cards for the entire country.

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