Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited activated 25,000 new 4G towers across rural and semi-urban India in just 60 days, the fastest single-vendor telecom rollout in India history. All towers use equipment developed by the BSNL-TCS-C-DoT consortium under the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, making it the world largest deployment of indigenous 4G telecom infrastructure. The activation brings reliable mobile broadband to approximately 4 crore people in 18,000 villages that previously had no 4G connectivity.
Telecom Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia described the rollout as a turning point in India indigenous telecom manufacturing story. BSNL now aims to activate 1 lakh 4G towers by March 2026 to cover all of India 6.4 lakh villages with broadband. The company reported a 22% increase in subscriber additions in the past quarter as rural customers migrate from competing networks attracted by lower tariff plans and improving service quality. The success of the indigenous equipment rollout has also enabled BSNL to tender for 5G spectrum, targeting a 5G launch in tier-2 and tier-3 cities by late 2026.