With a major network rollout on the cards, the government is not keen to change the pattern of tower monetisation for Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), officials at the state-owned telecom-service provider said.
The monetisation target in the telecom sector had to be revised owing to a change in BSNL’s approach to mobile-phone tower monetisation, which had shifted from a sale-based model to a lease-based one.
This had been pointed out in an inter-ministerial meeting of secretaries, part of the core group on asset monetisation (CGAM), chaired by the Cabinet secretary in August, Business Standard had earlier reported.
The CGAM had since then pulled up BSNL for its slow pace of asset monetisation, and for missing its monetisation targets, multiple times, people in the know said.
But officials said the telco would continue to monetise non-essential assets that would not be required in the foreseeable future.
“There is no proposal to change the contours of our monetisation.
"An outright sale of core assets such as towers is being reconsidered, given the 4G rollout and plans to quickly upgrade to 5G,” a BSNL official said.
As of January, both BSNL and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) together monetised assets worth ₹12,984 crore since 2019, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) told Parliament last month.
These included sales of non-core assets such as land and buildings worth ₹4,522.43 crore and ₹8,462.43 from sales of core assets like tower and fibre.
As against this, the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management in 2022 had approved the monetisation of BSNL assets worth ₹18,200 crore and six MTNL properties valued at ₹5,158 crore.
Meanwhile, BSNL plans to roll out its 4G network nationwide by June by deploying 100,000 sites and converting them to 5G within a month.
More than 83,000 of these sites have been installed while 75,000 of these were live till early March.
It has begun testing 5G infrastructure and sites have begun operating in Jaipur, Lucknow, Chandigarh, Bhopal, Kolkata, Patna, Hyderabad, and Chennai, and a few other state capitals, BSNL officials had said last month.
Slow and unsteady
A dedicated website set up to handle the asset monetisation of BSNL lists 5,354 separate vacant land and building assets in the country for sale and renting, apart from 536 upcoming properties for sale.
While BSNL did not provide any data on how many land parcels and buildings have been sold so far, officials say “the numbers are not high enough”.
In a letter to the chief secretaries of all states and Union Territories, and secretaries to all Union ministries, telecom secretary Neeraj Mittal had informed them that departments in need of land could directly seek to buy it from BSNL.
Officials at the telco said land parcels spread over hundreds of districts were particularly difficult to sell, especially outside major cities.
This is due to the plethora of permissions needed at local level.
Despite the Department of Telecommunications issuing a policy in 2021 for monetising land and buildings in BSNL through outright sale or transfer, the telco has struggled to monetise these, trying out multiple approaches.
The government’s continuous push to monetise BSNL’s assets is because of its efforts to reduce its net losses, which stood at ₹5,371 crore in FY24, down from ₹8,161 crore in FY23, and pare its debt.
More recently, the company’s consolidated net loss reduced to ₹836.07 crore in Q3 FY25, down from a net loss of ₹839.03 crore in Q3FY24.
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