BSNL EU said that the government’s decision not to allow BSNL to upgrade its existing 3G BTSs into 4G BTSs, through software upgradation as well as barring the public sector firm from procuring 4G equipment from global vendors has handicapped the company.”BSNL is barred from procuring standard 4G equipment from global vendors such as Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung, at par with Reliance Jio and Airtel. Instead, BSNL is compelled to procure its 4G equipment only from indigenous equipment manufacturers, which has greatly delayed BSNL’s 4G, as well as 5G service launchings,” the letter said.The union said that former telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in May 2023 had said that BSNL will launch its 4G service in a few weeks and the same would be upgraded to 5G by December but still the state-run firm has not been able to launch 4G service.”We would like to earnestly appeal to you sir, that necessary steps may kindly be taken expeditiously to ensure BSNL’s 4G launching without delay. Further, timely upgradation of this 4G service into 5G service, would enable BSNL to protect the interests of the common people of this country from the tariff hikes of profit-hungry private telecom service providers,” the union said.According to government sources, BSNL has rolled out 4G services in Punjab using indigenously developed technology by a consortium led by IT company TCS and telecom research organisation C-DoT and has onboarded 8 lakh subscribers.In May the source shared that BSNL is preparing to launch its highly anticipated 4G services across India starting in August.
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