A.K. Sinha, Chairman and Managing Director of BSNL, with S.K. Chakravorty (right), Chief General Manager of Calcutta Telephones, in Calcutta on Sunday. Picture by Kishor Roy Chowdhury

Calcutta, March 25: BSNL plans to invest Rs 20,000 crore in 2007-08 and aims to become a Rs 90,000-crore company by 2010. The company has invested Rs 16,000 crore in 2006-07 on its telecom networks.

“We expect to garner revenues of around Rs 40,000 crore this fiscal. We have been experiencing a flat growth of 6 to 7 per cent in the last three fiscals. This has been due to sluggish government support, falling revenues and declining access deficit charges over the last few years. But since a little more than a week is left in this fiscal, we expect to maintain the growth rate,” said A.K. Sinha, chairman and managing director, BSNL.

BSNL expects to close the fiscal with a profit of Rs 8,000 to 9,000 crore. Sinha was in the city to launch the voice SMS and video conferencing facilities of Calcutta Telephones for landline and CellOne customers.

The company has drawn up plans to achieve a double-digit growth by 2010. An additional 108 million mobile lines will be added to BSNL’s network. From 2008, the company plans to provide three lakh broadband and three million mobile connections every month, Sinha said.

On whether the telecom firm was mulling an initial public offering (IPO) to fund investment plans, Sinha said, “We are fundamentally a very strong company. Though there have been suggestions, we do not think that an IPO is the only option. There are several other options available to fund growth.” However, he did not throw light on the options.

This year has been declared as the ‘year of broadband’, and BSNL plans to shell out Rs 2,000 crore on infrastructure.

Currently, broadband is available in 800 cities and towns and has a subscriber base of over nine lakh.