The PSU has decided to add 7.5 million cellular lines this fiscal to its already 'in the process' roll out of 15 million connections.
The BSNL board has last week approved the plan, which is mainly aimed at providing cell phone connections on demand and cutting into the private sector's fiefdom in the same, sources said.
The provision of enhanced lines of 7.5 million has been incorporated in the original tender of 15 million lines floated earlier (four million lines each in South, East and Northern regions and three million in West) with participation from vendors like Nokia (north), Nortel (South and East) and Alcatel (West).
By 2007, this planned addition by BSNL will take the total GSM cellular lines to 82.5 millions in the country. The BSNL tender, which will also include 3G services, would be floated next month and may cost Rs 20,000-Rs 21,000 if the cost per line is about Rs 3,800.
At least 25 per cent of the total new mobile lines would be on 3G, the sources said. MTNL is also expected to provide four million more GSM lines in 2006-07, in addition to the plans to roll out two million connections this fiscal.
The government has set a target of 250 million phones by 2007 and out of this 100 million phones are already there. Out of the 150 million proposed additions, the PSUs have lined up almost 90 million phones with the remaining (60 million) expected to come from the private sector.
BSNL, a late entrant into the mobile segment, has already notched up a subscriber base of 1.13 crore (113 million) till last month of a total mobile subscriber base of over six crore (60 million).
Its current marketshare is 23.14 per cent and is only behind Bharti in GSM-based cellular telephone (mobile subscriber base of 1.34 crore), which started the service much earlier.
Reliance Infocomm which offers CDMA-based mobile service has a subscriber base of 1.1 crore (11 million). Overall in the mobile telephony segment, BSNL is the third largest operator in the country after Bharti and Reliance.
BSNL added 5.9 lakh new users in August. Fuelled by one of the most lowest tariff regimes of below Rs 1 per minute, Indian mobile addition has been over two million every month.
BSNL, a 100 per cent government-owned entity, operates throughout the country except Delhi and Mumbai.