Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is trying really hard to roll out 4G networks across the country, but there’s just one thing, it won’t happen anytime soon. Since the telco has proposed a hybrid 4G tender, it will have to wait for the Indian companies to come up with the Proof of Concept (POC) for their technology before they can be finalised as a part of the tender. Recently, multiple Indians companies submitted Expression of Interest (EoI) for the 4G tender of BSNL. The telco will be reviewing the submissions and then asking the qualified companies to submit a Bank Guarantee (BG) of 5 crores and go ahead with generating POC. Under the hybrid 4G tender, BSNL has reserved 57,000 sites across India for the Indian companies and the rest of the sites are for foreign vendors. However, the Indian companies are expected to take at least 4 months to come up with the POC. After POC, it will take at least another 10 months for the telco to roll out live 4G networks. This means that even without any delays, it will take BSNL at least 14 months from now to roll out new 4G networks. Thus India won’t see BSNL’s 4G before August or September 2022. On top of this, if there are any delays, it will take even more time for the telco to come out with its 4G networks.
Is BSNL’s 4G in Late 2022 Worth It?
BSNL’s 4G network might come in late 2022. However, there’s no saying whether it will be a good thing or a bad thing. In my opinion, even after 2 years, 4G will have all the use cases it has today since the 5G rollout is expected to be a little slow. Then again, no one knows the future. One thing is for sure, BSNL cannot survive on its legacy networks anymore. The telco needs to move on to either 4G or 5G and it doesn’t have the capacity nor the resources to move to 5G. So the only clear path for BSNL right now is to go ahead with 4G network rollout. You can criticise the telco for going to 4G when other operators are moving to 5G. But the sad reality is, even if BSNL wanted to move to 5G, it can’t do so straight away and it won’t even be profitable for the company in the medium-term. 5G handsets and 5G networks will take at least until 2025 or 2026 in India to reach their full potential. It might even take more time, thus BSNL cannot do 2G, 3G, and 5G. However, once the telco has successfully rolled out 4G networks in entire India, it can go ahead with slowly upgrading to 5G. BSNL still has a long way to go with 4G. Even if it’s late 2022, BSNL should try its best to do it before then. However, the telco must ensure that there are no more delays. Honestly, BSNL’s 4G will be a very fresh service in the market and it will be interesting to see how it performs against the networks of the other private telecom operators.
