Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: India is no longer a follower in telecom and has now become a leader in the sector, both in terms of services and also in terms of products, Union Minister for Communications and Development of North Eastern Region, Jyotiraditya M. Scindia, said. The number of customers across the country and the optical fibre cable network has expanded multiple times, the minister added. Addressing a press conference on achievements across the Ministry of Communications encompassing the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Department of Posts (DoP), Scindia said that internet connections had seen remarkable growth, and broadband connections had also increased significantly over the years.
“When we talk about scale, there is no rival to India in terms of exponential scale. If you were to purely classify India as a digital nation, India would be the third-largest digital nation in the world. So the Prime Minister’s foresight 11 years ago of creating an invisible digital highway and on that digital highway, creating the capability of multiple applications to reside and write, today has become a reality,” Scindia said. He termed BSNL’s financial revival as one of the “most remarkable achievements” of the Telecom Department.
After 18 years, BSNL turned profitable at the operational level, recording Rs 262 crore in Q3 and Rs 280 crore in Q4 of FY2024-25. “BSNL’s EBITDA has jumped threefold to Rs 5,395 crore, and its losses have been reduced from Rs 5,400 crore to Rs 2,400 crore,” Scindia said. This profound national transformation is also spearheaded by the successful deployment of the fully indigenous 4G stack—a massive technological breakthrough that places India among an elite group of nations capable of developing its own end-to-end telecom technology.
