Sanjay Singh / New Delhi

State-run telecom company, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) on Friday said that it will provide connectivity for first Multi-modal Waterways Project, one of the projects inaugurated by Prime Minister, Narendra Modi November 12 at an event held in Varanasi.

The first Multi-modal waterways terminals on the Ganga river, the project aims to develop the stretch of the river between Varanasi and Haldia (main port) for navigation of large vessels.

BSNL was associated with the project by providing leased circuits connectivity (River Information Service) at different locations en-route. The objective of the project is to provide inland waterways as an economical and environment friendly means of transportation, especially for cargo movement, BSNL said in statement today.

BSNL was asked to provide telecom interconnectivity between different ports for smooth operations in a time bound manner, it said.

Of late BSNL has been revamping its telecom infrastructure for mobile services, broadband and core network. BSNL is now undergoing for massive upgradation of its telecom infrastructure and network expansion for its 2G, 3G and 4G services including installing of over 50,000 base transceiver stations or BTS. As per the plan BSNL will be adding a total of 52,552 BTSs across the country in this fiscal year. The company has earmarked an investment of Rs 4300 crore for this project.

Besides its own services, the PSU telco is also involved in many government run projects including BharatNet that aims to connect 2,50,000 GPs across the country; connectivity in the LWE (left wing extremists) areas as well as in improving telecom connectivity in the North East corridor.
The operator is also working on the Network for Spectrum project for the defence forces which is being built against the spectrum the armed forces unit vacated to be used by telecom operators.
ENDS—