Company Press Release:

Commercial Launch of 3G Mobile Services in 11 Cities by BSNL

New Delhi, Friday the 27^th February, 2009: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), one of the leading telecom player, has launched 3G Mobile Services today on commercial basis simultaneously from 11 cities, namely, Agra, Ambala, Jalandhar, Jaipur, Dehradoon, Shimla, Lucknow, Ranchi, Durgapur, Haldia, Patna & soft launch in Jammu. BSNL also announced tariff plans for 3G mobile services under pre-paid and post-paid voice, video and data plans. The voice call will be available for as low as 10 paisa per minute under full value 1000 plan and local SMS is also as low as 10 paisa per SMS under Super 1,350 plan. Video calls starting with Re.1/- under unlimited 2,500 plan and Rs.2/- for STD video calls.

The 3G services of BSNL were launched by Hon'ble Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Thiru M. Karunanidhi by making the first video call to Hon'ble Minister of Communications and IT Thiru A. Raja on 22nd February, 2009 at Chennai. With today's commercial launch of the services, the services will now be made available to the consumers with immediate effect. The 3G services will bring high quality voice services along with high speed data and video services. The data speed is expected to go upto 2 Mbps or higher. Applications like, video telephony, mobile, broadband, mobile television and video on demand shall be offered to the consumer with immediate effect. It is expected that services like music downloads, video tones, instant messaging, on line gaming, bill payment, etc., will be offered shortly.

Speaking on the occasion, Shri Kuldeep Goyal, CMD BSNL said "it is a historical occasion for the country that India has come at par with most developed country of the world by making 3G services available to the citizens of this country. Value added services like mobile television, mobile broadband and subsequent services like mobile commerce will help to save cost and time for the common man which will ultimately drive the overall economy of this country. We are confident that people of India will find this technology quite useful and move towards the new way of conducting business."

BSNL has invested Rs.2,700 crore to make 3G services available to the consumers of this country. BSNL has planned to cover all District Headquarters and important commercial towns in Phase-1. Subsequently, other cities and towns will be covered as per the experience of Phase-1.

Congratulating BSNL on this remarkable achievement, Shri Gowton Achaibar, President, Ericsson India Pvt. Ltd. said, “Ericsson is proud to partner with BSNL in the roll out of 3G services in India. This helps us in bridging the urban-rural digital divide and makes 3G a reality in India. 3G will ultimately facilitate socio-economic development of the masses through applications such as Telemedicine, e-education and e-governance. This roll out is a great step towards 3G as an enabler for India to meet its target of 20 million broadband subscribers by 2010.”

BSNL, with more than 74 million telephone consumers, is the 2nd largest telecom operator in customer base and the largest as far as revenue is concerned. BSNL provides full bouquet of telecom services like mobile, fixed line, CDMA WLL, broadband, internet, V-Sat, leased line, managed network services and Wi-max services to consumers of India. BSNL operate across the country, except the cities of Delhi and Mumbai which are with MTNL. Today, BSNL has more than 43 million 2G connections. The company is presently expanding its 2G network with additional 34 million lines, out of which, more than 11 million lines are already commissioned.

BSNL committed to provide quality 3G services with rich contents to meet the desired level of satisfaction to our esteemed customers.

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