BPO policy soon for small towns; to help BSNL: Ravi Shankar Prasad

NEW DELHI: Government will soon finalise a business process outsourcing (BPO) policy for small towns that will create a big business opportunity for state-owned BSNL, which has a vast telecom network across the country, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said today.

"We are likely to finalise the BPO policy for smaller towns soon. Once this policy comes with a proper enabling atmosphere, you understand the kind of opportunity that would explode for BSNL. They would need landline and your landline network is everywhere," Prasad said.

BSNL should leverage its network of landline and think of innovative solutions around it, he said.

The minister was launching the next generation network (NGN) of BSNL which allows users to make video calls through landline phones, do multi-media video conferencing, transfer calls from landline to mobiles and vice versa. The facility is currently available in Bangalore and soon whole of Karnataka will be covered.

The facility is likely to be provided to all fixed line customers by December 2017. BSNL initially plans to invest Rs 1,000 crore in upgrading the network with NGN technology.

Stating that broadband should become the national infrastructure of the country, Prasad said BSNL would be setting up wi-fi hotspots in 2,500 cities and towns in 2-3 years.

Speaking on the occasion, BSNL CMD Anupam Shrivastava said although the company is passing through tough times, an upward trend in revenue is visible.

He said that in order to improve BSNL's profitability, various measures are being taken -- network is being upgraded, 6 data centres have been set up to provide fibre to home and wi-fi hotspots are being set up across the country.