BSNL's turnaround move: New chief to issue 15 m GSM tenders

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Q: Given the experience with WiMax world wide and the fact that it has not taken off, do you personally and because your experience with multiple technologies in such a long career, do you think that is something that BSNL will have to stay with or will ultimately converge towards LTE?

A: We have a spectrum which is okay for WiMax as well as for LTE TD. Now LTE TD trials are going on in different parts of the world. But very successful commercial deployment, I mean mature commercial deployment is yet to take place. Therefore we will have to also keep in mind the timeframe. Our meter is on, we have already taken the spectrum and we have paid the charges. So therefore I have constituted a committee in BSNL to go into the whole issue, I mean technology issue and they will come up with a report by the end of this month. Then we will be able to take a decision as to what is the way forward for this.

But coming to broadband, broadband we are looking into a very interesting opportunity for BSNL because of our capability of delivering broadband to you, to a customer and multiple technology forms. We are also thinking of bundling our 3G data cards with our landline broadband. So we say that while you are at home you are using BSNL's Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) broadband, when you go out you are on 3G and you get one common bill for this. What comes to my mind and would like your audience to know is that we want to create a situation that we want to tell our customers, our people at large that whenever you think of broadband think of BSNL.

So coming to this revenue stream this year we are pitching for large share of revenue, continued market leadership in broadband. Then hopefully by inducting more GSM equipment in the network we can acquire not only new customers, but also as you know mobile number portability is on so we want to reduce the churn. As it is, couple of circles of BSNL like Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Kerala, our port out to port in ratio is in our favour. That means more customers are coming to us.

I am very sure that with induction of this new equipment and also by improved performance, for which we are putting too much of emphasis on our circle heads and every functional level, we hope that we will be able to not only able to retain the customers in our northern and western circles where the churn is much higher, but also to acquire new customers.

Q: By when do you expect to deploy these 15 million lines? What is the timeframe that you have in mind?

A: We shall be able to procure this equipment as soon as possible. But in any case I don't this it would take less than three to four months.

Q: How much would it entail in terms of broadly the financial outgo?

A: As I said there will be no financial outgo.

Q: When people talk of Bharat Sanchar they also remember your sister company Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited and my question is not on MTNL's performance but to get your views on a proposal that was officially discussed and has been discussed since several years and this is about a merger with MTNL. In your capacity as the chairman and managing director and also in your capacity as someone who has observed and operated in the Indian telecom sector for many years, would you favor any sort of alignment, synergy, merger with MTNL?

A: Yes, alignment and synergy any day. We have already started working on that. Coming to merger per se, there are legal and financial issues which the government will have to resolve. Some HR issues are also there, for example salaries of highly structure companies are different. The MTNL is listed, not only on BSE but also on NYSE, so those issues will have to be tackled. Once the issues are successfully tackled by the government, then the merger makes sense, because there are a lot of synergies and the main advantage would be that government will have a company which will have pan India presence.

Q: What is the information that you can to share with us on the Sam Pitroda Committee Report? Are we going to see any implementation of the proposals and in your personal capacity would you agree with any of the proposals that we have made?

A: No, I have seen that report, it is an excellent report, puts in a very concise and clear manner as to what should be done with BSNL to bring it back to its past glory. So there are many suggestions, many of whom can be implemented by BSNL itself that we have already taken a step to implement. But there are couple of recommendations which fall in the purview of government. So government would be deciding that in due course of time.

For example one of the recommendations of that committee is that BSNL should move to the managed capacity and managed services model, which is excellent. So, we would be definitely taking the steps ourselves. Then it has also mentioned about sharing up the telecom resources. So we already have started sharing our tower with private operators.

Q: There was some talk of the fact that you will hive off the tower assets into a separate company and then possibly look at leveraging it?

A: No, actually that is next step. The first step in any case is whatever tower resources we are having where the slots we can spare, we should immediately start sharing with other operators. So that work has already commenced and we have rather revitalized it and we are looking at it as a new source of revenue under the new business vertical, the NB vertical.

But hiving off into a separate entity may not exactly be essential, though it is desirable, but it may not be essential. Once our tower sharing business picks up, then at a suitable point of time a call can be taken as to whether we carve out a separate fully owned subsidiary to begin with. Thereafter, seeing the market conditions, we may try to induct some partner also can bring cash and then we can expand the tower business.

But then as I see today there are already a good number of tower companies in the market. We are yet to see their mature business model.

Q: Final question, what is the future going to be? Give us a picture of how Bharat Sanchar will look towards the end of your tenure.

A: BSNL is an anchor company, it is operating in a strategic sector, it is wholly owned by the government. All these factors definitely give a very special status to BSNL. Therefore a good health of BSNL is not only in interest of BSNL itself, but it is in larger interest of country as well. There are multiple stakeholders apart from the government's who are our owner, my own employees and officers- they are the stakeholders which are very clearly visible. But what is not visible that not less than 700-800 if not more companies in India whom we call vendors who are our partners in our success or failure, their stake, their survival depends upon survival of BSNL.

Therefore, at any cost, BSNL must survive. BSNL must be brought back to a profit making organization, thriving vibrant organization. And I am pretty sure that the steps which we have initiated and which we shall be initiating in coming years with the active support of government, my own ministry, we shall definitely be able to achieve that.