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Our Bureau

New Delhi , April 7

BHARAT Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) on Thursday said that it had planned an investment of around Rs 75,000 crore over the next three years to expand its telecom services across the country. The State-owned company said that it would expand its broadband footprint to 200 more cities next month through infusion of fresh equipment.

"We aim to take our total subscriber base to 125 million during this period taking mobile, basic and broadband services together," Mr A.K. Sinha, Chairman and Managing Director, BSNL, said at a press conference.

Mr Sinha said that BSNL is likely to register a net profit of about Rs 7,000 crore for 2004-05, up from Rs 5,972 crore in 2003-04. The BSNL chief said that profitability was hit by the revision of the Access Deficit Charges and any further downward revision in the deficit charge would have a severe impact on the company's finances. BSNL is expecting revenues of Rs 37,000 crore in 2004-05.

When asked about the source of funding of its investment plans, Mr Sinha said BSNL would meet most of its requirements from internal accruals. The company may also raise debt from the market.

On broadband roll out, BSNL said that Data-1 with speed of over 256 Kbps was already available in 32 cities having 33,500 customers.

On cellular telephony, BSNL was aiming at cornering more than 4.1 million new users. "We are expecting a growth rate of more than 78 per cent customers in financial year 2004-05," Mr Sinha said. BSNL is the second largest cellular operator in the country with nearly 9 million mobile users.

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