Page 49 - TELEWAVE AUGUST-2015

 Creation of Tower Subsidiary: BSNL Management through a presentation to all the Unions/Associations on 21.04.2014 informed regarding tower business of BSNL. He explained in detail that at present about 2900 BSNL towers could be leased out to other Telecom Service Providers due to less focus on this issue. To provide more focus in this segment wherein approx. 62000 BSNL towers can be shared and may get approx. Rs. 35000/- per month per site and thus may be earn a huge revenue in the tone of hundreds of the Crores in the next 3-4 years itself as Four to Six Sites can be developed on a tower. He further mentioned about the recommendations of the Consultant and approval of BSNL board which is as under- Phase 1: Formation of a Strategic Business Unit (SBU) including outsourcing of Operations & Maintenance and Sales & Marketing. Phase 2: Creation of subsidiary and induction of a Joint Venture (JV) partner. To begin with the action plan to implement the first phase of advise, a Project Management Office (PMO) is proposed to be established for which services of professionally qualified external consultant are to be taken. The timeline for the phase 1 and phase 2 is expected to be 12-18 months and the proposal has been forwarded to DoT for the approval. We strongly opposed against induction of strategic Joint Venture (JV) partner who will come to earn more and more revenue from BSNL infrastructure and finally may take over the tower subsidiary company by increasing its share. It will dilute the strength of BSNL and allow fragmentation of BSNL. We pleaded that BSNL tower should be monetized by creating its own infra units at all circles/ SSA level i.e. the Strategic Business Unit (SBU) as recommended by the consultant as the Phase-1 to maintain the site perfectly and earn revenue by leasing out and creating new sites. We strongly opposed the implementation of the Phase-2 of the recommendations. All the Unions and Associations representatives present in the meeting also opposed the Govt. decision for creation of BSNL tower subsidiary by induction of strategic partner. GM (SR) assured to communicate our feelings to the BSNL Management. Now, the cabinet, in its meeting held on 05.08.2015 has given the “In-principle” approval to the proposal for hiving off the telecom tower infrastructure of BSNL into a separate subsidiary company which will be fully owned by BSNL. Consequent to approval, DoT will constitute an inter-ministerial group consisting of representatives of DPE, DoP PW and DEA for working out the capital structure and organizational structure of the new company after market valuation of its tower assets holding for consideration of the Union Cabinet. On this arbitrary decision of the Government of India for formation of a Subsidiary Tower Company of BSNL Mobile Towers a Demonstration has held on 12.08.2015 all over the country on the call of Forum of BSNL Unions / Associations. 6 Merger of BSNL & MTNL: In the UPA Government the Empowered Group of Ministers rd (EGoM) recommended to provide Pension to MTNL employees under Rule-37A., after 3 PRC, the pay scales of BSNL & MTNL employees will be made equal which has got approval of Cabinet and orders are issued. It is also proposed that as per synergy and PAN INDIA presence to review both the PSUs, EGoM has also suggested merger of BSNL & MTNL. EGoM’s recommendations are yet to be send to Cabinet for approval. Meanwhile some study groups were formed in DoT to examine the issues related to financial matters, technical matters and HR issues. We have given our views on this issue that before the merger of BSNL and MTNL these issues needs settlement to avoid complications. TELEWAVE Page-49 AUGUST-2015