Lok Sabha Question No. 21 (STARRED), answered on 2021-02-03
Subject: Services of BSNL in North Eastern States
Ministry: COMMUNICATIONS
Asked by: Naba (Hira) Kumar Sarania

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS

## LOK  SABHA STARRED QUESTION NO. 21 TO BE ANSWERED ON 3 RD  FEBRUARY, 2021

## SERVICES OF BSNL IN NORTH EASTERN STATES

## †*21. SHRI NABA KUMAR SARANIA:

Will the Minister of COMMUNICATIONS  be pleased to state:

- (a) the number of mobile and landline subscribers of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) in the North Eastern States of the country, State-wise;
- (b) the details of the schemes proposed and being worked out by the Government to strengthen the BSNL's network in the said States;
- (c) whether the Government proposes to increase the BSNL's broadband speed in the region and if so, the details thereof;
- (d) whether there are some areas in these States where landlines are not used;
- (e) whether BSNL landlines are functional in those areas;
- (f) the alternates available to the people residing in those areas; and
- (g) whether the Government proposes to lay down optical fibre in the North-Eastern region to increase the internet speed and if so, the details thereof along with the extent to which the people of these States are likely to be benefited by it?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER OF COMMUNICATIONS, LAW & JUSTICE AND ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI RAVI SHANKAR PRASAD)

- (a) to (g) A statement is laid on the Table of the House.

STATEMENT TO BE LAID ON THE TABLE OF LOK SABHA IN RESPECT OF PARTS (a) to  (g)  OF  LOK  SABHA  STARRED  QUESTION  NO.  21  FOR  3 RD   FEBRUARY,  2021 REGARDING 'SERVICES OF BSNL IN NORTH EASTERN STATES'.

(a) State  wise  details  of  mobile  and  landline  subscribers  of  Bharat  Sanchar  Nigam  Limited (BSNL) in the North Eastern States of the country are as under:

| S. No.   | State             | Number of BSNL subscribers as on 30.09.2020   | Number of BSNL subscribers as on 30.09.2020   |
|----------|-------------------|-----------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------|
|          |                   | Land Line subscribers                         | Mobile subscribers                            |
| 1.       | Assam             | 88,179                                        | 28,88,111                                     |
| 2.       | Meghalaya         | 13,927                                        | 3,21,149                                      |
| 3.       | Mizoram           | 10,102                                        | 2,33,861                                      |
| 4.       | Tripura           | 16,683                                        | 4,33,063                                      |
| 5.       | Arunachal Pradesh | 20,984                                        | 1,93,647                                      |
| 6.       | Manipur           | 8,907                                         | 99,509                                        |
| 7.       | Nagaland          | 5,546                                         | 86,377                                        |
| 8.       | Sikkim            | 5,060                                         | 65,513                                        |

(b) BSNL has informed that following projects have been undertaken to expand its network in the North-Eastern States of the country:

## For Broadband:

1. BSNL  has  signed  an  agreement  with  Universal  Service  Obligation  Fund  (USOF)  to  provide internet connectivity through 680 Wi-Fi Hotspots to rural & remote areas of North Eastern States.
2. Additional  Broadband  Network  Gateway  (BNG)  added  in  Shillong  &  Itanagar  to  enhance Broadband speed in the North Eastern States.
3. 5 High Capacity MPLS-TP, MNG-PAN (Multi Protocol Label Switching-Transport Profile based Next Generation Packet Aggregation Network) technology-based nodes installed in Nagaland, 15 Nodes installed in Tripura and 36 nodes installed in Assam which improved the traffic handling capacity of the Access network in the North Eastern States.
4. New  Domain  Name  Servers  (DNS)  have  been  deployed  at  Agartala,  Tripura  to  improve  the customer experience of NE States while connecting to DNS servers.
5. Backhaul of DSLAM (Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer), OCLAN (Other City Local Area Network), OLT (Optical Line Terminal) have been upgraded.

## For Landline:

BSNL  is  migrating  all  Landline  customers  from  Old  Technology  Exchanges  to  Server technology based Soft-Switches for better quality of service and more effective monitoring.

## For Mobile:

Under phase  VIII.4  project,  mobile  network  in  North  Eastern  States  has  been  strengthened.  Statewise status of BTSs/e-NodeBs commissioned under the project is tabulated below:

| S.   | State             | Commissioned under Phase VIII.4   | Commissioned under Phase VIII.4   | Commissioned under Phase VIII.4   | Commissioned under Phase VIII.4   |
|------|-------------------|-----------------------------------|-----------------------------------|-----------------------------------|-----------------------------------|
| No.  |                   | 2G                                | 3G                                | 4G                                | Total                             |
| 1.   | Assam             | 436                               | 665                               | 284                               | 1385                              |
| 2.   | Meghalaya         | 5                                 | 83                                | 108                               | 196                               |
| 3.   | Mizoram           | 13                                | 34                                | 58                                | 105                               |
| 4.   | Tripura           | 7                                 | 125                               | 120                               | 252                               |
| 5.   | Arunachal Pradesh | 45                                | 55                                | 50                                | 150                               |
| 6.   | Manipur           | 75                                | 99                                | 74                                | 248                               |
| 7.   | Nagaland          | 18                                | 18                                | 17                                | 53                                |
| 8.   | Sikkim            | 90                                | 45                                | 40                                | 175                               |

On the basis of techno-commercial viability and availability of funds & equipment, BSNL is progressively  adding  more  sites  in  rural  as  well  as  urban  areas  under  various  network  expansion phases and thereby increasing mobile coverage and data connectivity in more villages and urban areas across all its Licensed Service Areas (LSAs) including North Eastern States.

For expansion of 4G services, BSNL has invited EOI (Express of Interest) for PoC (Proof of Concept) on 1 st January 2021.

(c) BSNL has informed that it is providing Fibre to the Home (FTTH) connections for high-speed Broadband in all North Eastern States. 32,266 FTTH connections have been provided. Further, after expansion  of  4G  services  in  North  Eastern  States,  BSNL's  broadband  speed  in  the  region  will improve significantly.

(d) to (f) 521 Landline Telephone Exchanges of BSNL  including 342 rural Telephone Exchanges are operational in the North Eastern States and BSNL is providing landline services within 5 Kms vicinity of these Telephone Exchanges. The breakup of telephone exchanges in North Eastern States is as below:

|   Sl. No. | State             |   Urban |   Rural |   Total |
|-----------|-------------------|---------|---------|---------|
|         1 | Assam             |     179 |     342 |     521 |
|         2 | Meghalaya         |      20 |      25 |      45 |
|         3 | Mizoram           |      25 |      25 |      50 |
|         4 | Tripura           |      31 |      48 |      79 |
|         5 | Arunachal Pradesh |      28 |      40 |      68 |
|         6 | Manipur           |      18 |      23 |      41 |
|         7 | Nagaland          |      20 |      12 |      32 |
|         8 | Sikkim            |       9 |      23 |      32 |

Based on the technical  feasibility  and  commercial  viability,  endeavours  to  provide  telecom connectivity including in rural and remote areas. BSNL always endeavours to maintain high uptime of its telecom network. BSNL has informed that it is meeting most of the Quality of Service (QoS) parameters  fixed  by  Telecom  Regulatory  Authority  of  India  (TRAI)  for  both  landline  and  mobile consumers.

Besides, with the increasing proliferation of mobile towers and expansion of mobile network of  BSNL  and  other  telecom  service  providers,  there  is  increase  in  use  of  mobile  services.  More people in the country including North Eastern States have now started using mobile services.

(g)  Under BharatNet project to provide broadband connectivity to all the Gram Panchayats (approx. 2.5 lakh) in the country including in the North Eastern States, a total of 5,154 Gram Panchayats (GPs) including Block Headquarters (BHQs) (2,954 GPs on OFC and 2,200 GPs on Satellite media) have been made Service Ready in the North Eastern Region (NER) as on 15.01.2021. The State-wise list is attached as below:

|        |                   | Total No. of On OFC media   | Total No. of On OFC media   | Total No. of On OFC media   | On Satellite media   | On Satellite media   | Total             |
|--------|-------------------|-----------------------------|-----------------------------|-----------------------------|----------------------|----------------------|-------------------|
| S. No. | State             | GPs (Including BHQs)        | Target                      | Service Ready GPs           | Target               | Service Ready GPs    | Service Ready GPs |
| 1      | Assam             | 2750                        | 2745                        | 1627                        | 5                    | 0                    | 1627              |
| 2      | Meghalaya         | 1791                        | 1194                        | 122                         | 597                  | 237                  | 359               |
| 3      | Mizoram           | 763                         | 262                         | 41                          | 501                  | 262                  | 303               |
| 4      | Tripura           | 1006                        | 864                         | 595                         | 142                  | 135                  | 730               |
| 5      | Arunachal Pradesh | 1796                        | 717                         | 88                          | 1079                 | 422                  | 510               |
| 6      | Manipur           | 2785                        | 1566                        | 326                         | 1219                 | 1091                 | 1417              |
| 7      | Nagaland          | 994                         | 874                         | 127                         | 120                  | 53                   | 180               |
| 8      | Sikkim            | 176                         | 163                         | 28                          | 13                   | 0                    | 28                |
| Total  | Total             | 12061                       | 8385                        | 2954                        | 3676                 | 2200                 | 5154              |

Further, as part of the BharatNet project, the Last Mile connectivity is being provided through Wi-Fi or any other suitable broadband technology.  Fiber to the Home (FTTH) connections to access broadband/internet services at Public/Government Institutions such as school, hospital, post offices, Aanganwadi, Police Stations, etc. is also being provided. As on 15.01.2021, Wi-Fi hotspots have been installed at 51 GPs and 8,942 FTTH connections have been provided in the North Eastern States.

DoT has  been  proactively  working  towards  improving  the  telecom  connectivity  in  the  NE region.  The  number  of  Base  Transceiver  Stations  (BTSs)  have  increased  from  62,516  as  on 01.04.2019 to 82,500 as on 31.12.2020 i.e. by 32 per cent. With the efforts made, the tele-density in Assam has improved to 68.33 per cent and in other North East States to 78.89 per cent against All India average of 86.38 per cent. The data usage per subscriber per month as on 31.12.2020 is 14.02 GB for Assam and 12.10 GB for other NE States against All India average of 12.15 GB.

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