The Nashik unit of the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has floated tenders for upgrading its network in the city. These tenders include laying optical fibre and copper cables as well as provisioning of landline, broadband and fibre to the home (FTTH) services.
BSNL has been facing issues in fulfilling the demand of its customers. The company has identified 13 areas in the city that are growing fast and have been marked for laying of optical fibre cable for wired connections. Meanwhile, FTTH services have failed to get a good response from its customers. Presently, there are only 297 FTTH connections in the city despite it being launched over two years ago. The primary challenge in FTTH is the Optical Network Terminal (ONT) that costs Rs 12,000 per unit (outright purchase) or Rs 150 per month rental. This often proves to be much higher for customers that request for wired landline with broadband connections.
BSNL has now floated tenders and is set to take measures to ensure that the maximum connections are provided to customers. By end-March 2015, BSNL?s Nashik unit aims to be in a position to provide more wired landline connections.
