by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Technology
BSNL has been on a roll for the last few months, going aggressive with its telecom and broadband plans. In a bid to offset its financial losses, the state-owned telecom operator has been quite generous with its plans. BSNL even started its 4G network in many circles with special introductory plans to encourage its customers to upgrade to the faster network. With its broadband, BSNL is also doing the same thing, offering more benefits at lower prices. And now, there’s another plan to appeal to the subscribers.
JioFiber’s entry n to the Indian market has led many players to bring aggressive plans around the Rs 700 price point and jumping in on the bandwagon, BSNL has also reintroduced its Rs 777 plan. This plan was previously available for its broadband subscribers but it was taken off in favour of the Rs 849 plan. Now, as spotted by Telecom Talk, BSNL has brought back the plan for a limited period.
With the Rs 777 plan, subscribers will get a total of 500GB data per month. And given that this plan will be available for six months only, it’s quite beneficial for those who have higher data usage in their homes. The plan offers a network speed of 50Mbps, which is lower than the base speeds at which JioFiber is operating. However, unlike JioFiber, BSNL already has an established presence across the country.
Now unlike the plans from JioFiber or Airtel, BSNL doesn’t offer any additional benefits such as third-party OTT subscriptions, device security and more. Hence, all you are getting is the data benefits.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, News
Guwahati : Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has started a survey for installing mobile towers along the highly sensitive India-China border in Arunachal Pradesh.
The installation of mobile towers is expected to better the connectivity in the area.
BSNL’s Chief General Manager (CGM) for Assam Circle, Sanddep Govil, said this on Friday while addressing a press conference and added that the installation of mobile towers along the India-China border has been cleared by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
Govil said the government has approved a proposal for setting up 2,000 mobile towers along the border in Arunachal Pradesh.
There are no mobile towers along the India-China border in Arunachal Pradesh due to various reasons, including bad terrain. This makes it difficult for the security forces, including the Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), to maintain a strict vigil along the border.
There have been instances of intrusion by the Chinese army at different locations in Arunachal Pradesh. The security forces operating along the border here have for long demanded the installation of mobile towers for better connectivity in the region.
Govil said that BSNL is investing about Rs 200 crore for rolling out 4G services in Assam, which will be made available from March this year.
“All the equipment has already arrived at the Kolkata port and is likely to reach here by the end of this month. A total of 3,500 base transceiver stations (BTS) will be added as part of the 4G expansion plan. The launch of 4G services will lead to the capability of using 23 TB of data by the customers per day,” Govil said.
He added that the public sector undertaking has been growing in Assam faster than its growth in the country. “The market share of Assam BSNL for the wireless segment is 11.07 per cent compared to the overall market share of 9.71 per cent in the country,” Govil said, adding that at present BSNL has a customer base of 25 lakh in the state in the mobile segment.
Asked about revenue generation, the CGM said that revenues from telecom have gone down.
“But there is scope of revenue generation for us, as we have recently given 35,000 closed user group (CUG) connections under the National Health Mission. We have also been asked by the government of India to connect the courts and jails and provide connections to the treasuries,” Govil said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Finance, News, Politics
Kolkata : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday wrote to Union Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha urging him to take steps to regularise wage payments to contractual workers working in BSNL.
“Thousands of contractual workers associated with different establishments of BSNL under Calcutta Telephones and West Bengal Telecom Circle are facing acute hardship due to non-payment/irregular payment of wages as well as loss of jobs,” Banerjee said in the letter.
Enclosed a letter from the INTTUC-affiliated BSNL-Nationalist Thika Workers’ Congress Union, she requested Sinha to look into the matter urgently so that the insurmountable difficulties being faced by the workers are addressed at the earliest.
According to the union, BSNL contract workers in the state were not getting their monthly wages on time, since 2017.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, Economy, News
Mumbai : Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) employees union would go on an indefinite strike from December 3 over non-issuance of the third pay revision.
In a letter to Union Communications Minister Manoj Sinha on November 28 (Wednesday), the union sought a level-playing field for the company in comparison to other players in the telecom sector.
“Thousands of workers (Non-Executives and Executives of BSNL) are retiring every month. Naturally, issues of their third pay revision are still pending despite clear commitment given to them in that regard and that has created serious resentment among them,” said the letter.
It further said: “They are expecting at least 15 per cent enhancement/fitment in pay and payment of pension contribution by BSNL and revision of pension to BSNL retirees with effect from 01.01.2017, as made available to a number of public sector employees and officers.”
The employee’s union also sought the allotment of 4G spectrum to BSNL.
Further, the Centre of Indian Trade Union in a statement released in support of the demands said that the allotment of 4G spectrum to BSNL “is being deliberately delayed by the government to allow advantage to private telecom operators at the cost of BSNL.”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Markets, Networking, Sales, SMEs, Technology
New Delhi : Global IT security firm Quick Heal’s Enterprise Security brand Seqrite has discovered an advertisement on DarkNet forum that claims to have access to data of over 6,000 Indian businesses that include Internet Service Providers (ISPs), some of the key government organisations, banks and enterprises.
Seqrite Cyber Intelligence Labs, along with its partner seQtree InfoServices, tracked the advertisement where the unknown hacker has priced the information at 15 Bitcoins (nearly Rs 42 lakh) and is offering network takedown of affected organisations for an unspecified amount, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.
“This can be a major tool of mass disruption if a non-state actor gets hands on it,” Seqrite said on its website.
The organisations whose services may be at risk are: UIDAI (Aadhaar), Idea Telecom, Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), Flipkart, DRDO, Aircel, Reserve Bank of India, BSNL, SBI, TCS, ISRO, ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund, VMWare, Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation and various Indian state government portals, among others.
“We have alerted the government authorities well within time. If someone gets control over this massive data that is currently up for sale on DarkNet, the above mentioned organisations and enterprises can get affected,” Rohit Srivastwa, Senior Director, Cyber Education and Services at Quick Heal, told IANS.
Following a detailed investigation, researchers identified the affected organisation as India’s national Internet registry IRINN (Indian Registry for Internet Names and Numbers) which comes under the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI).
As a precautionary measure, Seqrite reached out to the government authorities and Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), recommending to them to alert all potentially affected organisations and urge them to change passwords and get their servers and systems patched with latest updates.
According to the researchers, the seller claims to have the ability to tamper the IP allocation pool, which could result in a serious outage or Denial of Service (DoS) attack-like condition.
“This could impact various content delivery network (CDN) and hosting providers as well. If the hacker gets an interested buyer, then an attack on the system could disrupt Internet IP allocation and affect Internet services in India,” the company said.
“Along with the access, the hacker is also selling credentials and various contractual business documents and claims to have access to a large database of Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC),” it added.
The IRINN provides allocation and registration services of IP addresses and autonomous system numbers.
It comes under NIXI which “is the neutral meeting point of the ISPs in India with the primary objective being the facilitation of exchange of domestic Internet traffic between peering ISP members”.
—IANS
