BSNL undertakes Rs 1,000 cr investment plan

State-owned BSNL has undertaken a Rs 1,000 crore investment plan which include launch of Skype facility and setting up of Wi-Fi hotspots at tourist places, a top official said on Friday.

"We have taken several measures. Only last week we began migration of landline customers to next generation service facility.

It will provide lot of services to customers. Second, we are experimenting with BSNL Skype. For the Wi-Fi hotspots, 14 centres in tourist places in South zone have been identified," BSNL Director N K Gupta said.

"These are the plans which I said entailing Rs 1,000 crore investments. It will take at least five to six months (to roll out)", he told reporters, after launching the fourth Internet Data Centre here established with datacentre infrastructure firm CtrlS. Currently, BSNL has set up such internet data centres in Ahmedabad, Faridabad and Hyderabad.

CtrlS will provide the infrastructure facility while BSNL will provide the bandwidth and space for the service. "This is part of revenue sharing between CtrlS and BSNL. It will be able to host services; can be used as software as a service and cloud computing", he said.

According to a company official, the service would be offered to corporates and companies like National Payment Corporaton Chennai office and Electronic Corporation of Tamil Nadu have evinced interest to avail the service.