The Hindu Business Line : BSNL plans 10 m more CDMA lines

IN a major expansion plan, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd has proposed to roll out another 10 million CDMA (code division multiple access) lines at an investment of around Rs 5,000 crore over the next two years.

The State-owned company is also looking at tying up with CDMA handset manufacturers for bundling telephone handsets with every connection.

BSNL is already in the process of rolling out 12 million Global System for Mobile (GSM) cellular lines across the country. The CDMA project will enable the PSU to take on Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices, which have close to eight million subscribers. As per the roll out plan, the telephone lines would be rolled out in two phases of five million lines each. Of the 10 million lines, four million phones have been reserved for the rural areas.

"The current CDMA network of BSNL does not enable it to reap benefits of technology fully. Therefore it was felt that there was a need to revise our approach in CDMA deployment by providing upgradation of existing network and establishment of new network with high speed data handling capabilities," BSNL executives said. The company would, however, offer only limited mobility services for now.

While BSNL is planning to roll out CDMA 1X 2000, which is a third generation technology with high data speeds, the company may redeploy its existing CDMA infrastructure of about 1 million lines to areas where high data speeds are not required.

The telecom major is expected to invest Rs 2,500 crore during 2004-05. A working committee has been constituted by BSNL to work out the modalities of the proposal. BSNL sources said the focus of the CDMA project would to improve connectivity in rural areas and to cater to the growing demand for data services. "CDMA has some advantages over GSM when it comes to data services. CDMA has higher spectrum efficiency, higher quality, better coverage, simpler frequency planning and easier migration to 3G," BSNL officials said.