Bharat Sanchar Nigam will not allow private telecom service providers to become its franchisee for providing broadband services.
"We will have franchisees for providing content only. We will provide other services for broadband on our own," said BSNL chairman and managing director AK Sinha on the sidelines of a seminar on dispute resolution in the telecom sector, organised by the Telecom Dispute Settlement and Appealatory Tribunal.
He said the broadband services would be provided under the BSNL brandname and franchisees would not be allowed to use their name.
At present, BSNL is not allowing telecom operators wanting to become its franchisee. "If required, we will look into it in future," Sinha added.
BSNL is in talks with some private sector companies for franchising sections of the project. An agreement has already been entered into with the Bangalore-based Ispatial for deploying broadband in seven cities and Atlas Interactive in four cities.
BSNL is rolling out its broadband network on its own across 198 cities with an aim to garner 1 million subscribers by December 2005. Through a project called National Internet Backbone Phase-II, BSNL is deploying multi-gigabit, multi-protocol IP infrastructure to provide voice, data and video through the same backbone.
BSNL will be deploying three different technologies for rolling out broadband services. The public sector company is using the Multiprotocol Label Switching, which will be commissioned across 71 cities by November.
BSNL is also using the popular Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line on its existing copper lines for services such as high-speed Internet and video on demand services. BSNL is also using the digital loop carrier system for which it has tied up with ITI Ltd.
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