Calcutta Telephones chief general manager S.K. Chakravarty (right) with Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce president Atul Churiwal in Calcutta on Friday. Picture by Kishor Roy Chowdhury

Calcutta, Nov. 16: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) plans to invest Rs 93,521 crore to double its revenue to Rs 80,000 crore by 2010.

S.K. Chakravarty, chief general manager of Calcutta Telephones, BSNL, said, “The growth is expected to be fuelled by factors like a projected addition of three million GSM subscribers nationally every month. This is also expected to be supported by five lakh monthly broadband additions.”

The telecom PSU plans to invest Rs 29,654 crore in 2008, Rs 31,163 crore in 2009 and Rs 32,705 crore in 2010.

Broadband is an area of focus for BSNL. In India, the actual number of broadband users is way below the national target. Broadband connections till 2007 are only 2.4 million against the target of 9 million.

“The broadband penetration is only 3.2 per cent and only in urban areas. This has to be rectified if we want to achieve 20 million broadband connections by 2010,” Chakravarty said.

There is a waiting list of 9,000 for broadband in Calcutta, and it takes up to 3 months to get a connection.

With the arrival of broadband hardware, BSNL expects to clear the waiting list, after which it will take 10 days to get a connection.

The company is also expecting to connect 25,000 villages via WiMax by 2010 at an investment of Rs 2,000 crore.

This service will also be available in 70 cities, for which BSNL will invest another Rs 200 crore. The company will soon take an assurance from the government to provide it with 2.5GHz of spectrum for WiMax. The service will be available from the second-half of 2008. BSNL will set up 50,000 kiosks to provide the facility.

Chakravarty said number portability would bring with it problems. “Currently our exchanges have to read only the first five digits to ascertain the network of any number. With number portability exchanges would have to be altered in such a manner so as to read all the 10 digits of a mobile number to ascertain the originating network,” Chakravarty said.