Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved a Rs 1.64 lakh crore package for the revival of state-owned telecom firm BSNL, Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said.<\/p>\n
The revival measures approved by the Cabinet focus on fresh capital for upgrading services, allocating spectrum, de-stressing its balance sheet and augmenting its fiber network by merging Bharat Broadband Nigam Ltd (BBNL) with BSNL.<\/p>\n
Briefing reporters on the decision taken by the Union Cabinet, he said the package has a cash component of Rs 43,964 crore and a non-cash component of Rs 1.2 lakh crore spread over four years.<\/p>\n
The government will make administrative allocation of spectrum BSNL needs to offer 4G services. The allocation of spectrum in 900\/1800 MHz band at the cost of Rs 44,993 crore would be through equity infusion.<\/p>\n
He said to meet the projected capital expenditure for next four years, the government will fund capex of Rs 22,471 crore for developing 4G technology stack.<\/p>\n
Also, the government will provide Rs 13,789 crore to BSNL as viability-gap funding for commercially unviable rural wireline operations done during 2014-15 to 2019-20.<\/p>\n
To de-stress the balance sheet, Rs 33,404 crore statutory dues will be converted into equity.<\/p>\n
Besides, the government will provide sovereign guarantee for raising money to repay current loans, he said.<\/p>\n
To facilitate wider utilization of infrastructure laid under BharatNet, BBNL will be merged with BSNL, he said.<\/p>\n
The infrastructure created under BharatNet will continue to be a national asset, accessible on a non-discriminatory basis to all the Telecom Service Providers.<\/p>\n
The Minister said the Union Cabinet also approved a project for saturation of 4G mobile services in uncovered villages across the country at a total cost of Rs 26,316 crore.<\/p>\n
The project will provide 4G mobile services in 24,680 uncovered villages in remote and difficult areas, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved a Rs 1.64 lakh crore package for the revival of state-owned telecom firm BSNL, Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said. The revival measures approved by the Cabinet focus on fresh capital for upgrading services, allocating spectrum, de-stressing its balance sheet and augmenting its fiber network by merging Bharat Broadband Nigam Ltd […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":338707,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338708,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338706\/revisions\/338708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/338707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}