Question : Mobile and Landline Customers in North Eastern Region

(a) the number of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) mobile and landline customers in North Eastern States of the country, State/UT-wise;

(b) the steps taken/being taken by the Government to strengthen BSNL network in the said region;

(c) the steps taken by the Government to enhance the BSNL broadband speed in the aforesaid region;

(d) whether BSNL landlines are functional in the said region where there is reportedly no use of landlines and if so, the details thereof; and

(e) the details of States/UTs where the work on Bharat Net project is going on along with the number of villages in the North Eastern States which has been covered under the said project, State/UT-wise?

MINISTER OF STATE FOR COMMUNICATIONS,
HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT AND
ELECTRONICS & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
(SHRI SANJAY DHOTRE)

(a) State-wise detail of mobile and landline connections of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) in the North Eastern States of the country is as under:
<pre>
S.No. State Mobile connections Landline connections
1 Assam 27,61,008 78,400
2 Arunachal Pradesh 2,31,299 23,092
3 Manipur 1,19,185 18,931
4 Nagaland 1,03,594 5,936
5 Meghalaya 3,13,745 15,064
6 Mizoram 2,20,736 11,354
7 Tripura 4,20,730 17,858
8 Sikkim 45,000 (approx.) 5,254
</pre>
(b) BSNL has informed that to strengthen its network, BSNL is progressively adding Base Transceiver Stations (BTSs) and laying optical fibre cable in a phased manner and improving landline services through installation of Next Generation Network (NGN)/C-DoT Max NG state of the art technology telephone exchanges.
Apart from above, Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is utilising the strength and competence of BSNL to implement a number of important projects including “Implementation of transmission media plan for North Eastern Region Project” to strengthen telecom services in North Eastern region. Under Universal Services Obligation Fund (USOF) schemes, Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) to connect Block Headquarters (BHQs) to District Headquarters (DHQs) in Assam State is complete.

(c) To enhance its broadband services, following measures have been taken by BSNL:
? 56 number of High capacity Multiprotocol Label Switching Transport Profile (MPLS-TP) technology based (MNG PAN) switches are deployed in North Eastern States which improved the traffic handling capacity of the access network in the North Eastern region.
? In addition to the existing six (6) number of Broadband Network Gateways (BNGs), four (4) number of high speed BNGs has been deployed at Guwahati, Bongaigaon, Shillong and Arunachal Pradesh to improve the customer browsing experience.
? In case of congestion, backhaul of DSLAM (Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer), OCLAN (Other City Lane Area Network), OLT (Optical Line Terminal) are being upgraded to improve the browsing experience.

(d) BSNL has informed that its landline services are functional in North Eastern States. There is no report that landline services of BSNL in North Eastern States are of no use.

(e) As on 24.02.2020, State wise details of number of service ready Gram Panchayats (GPs) under Bharat Net in the North Eastern States is at Annexure.