BSNL to offer free national roaming from June 15

Telecom services provider BSNL will provide free national roaming from June 15, Minister for Communications and IT, Ravi Shankar Prasad, announced here on Tuesday. However, free incoming calls will be offered only for one year.

Speaking on completion of the government’s one-year tenure, Prasad said BSNL is already on recovery path and is ready to compete with private players.

BSNL has a mobile subscriber base of 7.72 crore as of March-end.

The announcement comes ahead of full mobile number portability (MNP), which will be effective in July.

The Minister said there is a lot of improvement in the IT and telecom sectors compared with the earlier government, which is creating optimism and confidence to generate hope for growth.

He said in 2004, BSNL made profits of ₹10,000 crore, and its losses stood at ₹7,500 crore in 2014 when the Narendra Modi government took over. MTNL also was in the profit zone till 2008, but is now facing losses, he added.

He said the government’s efforts are bearing fruit, adding that BSNL’s revenue was up 2.1 per cent in 2014-15 and it added 47 lakh active subscribers.

Under phase VII of BSNL, 15,000 new base tower stations were commissioned in one year, which have reduced call drops and eased congestion.

BSNL and MTNL will add more towers in the coming years, he said.

“MTNL added 2.11 lakh subscribers in 2014-15, arresting the negative trend of previous years, and will add 1,680 tower sites in Delhi and Mumbai each,” he said.

When asked about the merger of the two, Prasad said, “Let them go on the revival path…we will see.”

On frequent call drops, Prasad said the government was exploring the possibility of bringing in disincentives for telecom operators to counter the issue.

“Call drops need to be minimised. They (private operators) need to reinforce their mechanism. I have directed officials in the department to work on a disincentive architecture (for the operators).”

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