BSNL says its new platform will help bridge the digital divide in rural and remote areas.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) on Friday launched a new 4G and 5G-enabled over-the-air (OTA) and universal SIM (USIM) platform. With the move, India’s state-run telecom provider aims to improve service quality and connectivity in line with the government’s ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ initiative. The introduction will enable users to freely swap SIM cards without any geographical restrictions. The platform has been developed in collaboration with telecom development company Pyro Holdings .

BSNL 4G, 5G OTA Platform

According to a BSNL post on its Twitter handle, the platform has been launched in Chandigarh, with disaster recovery sites set up in Tiruchirappalli or Trichy in Tamil Nadu . The platform, which caters to BSNL users across the country, is aimed at improving the telecom services and network capabilities of the state-run provider.

This is said to provide faster network speeds and better coverage across India. Additionally, it will also facilitate number portability and SIM swapping as users will be able to swap SIM cards without any geographical restrictions.

Announcing this, BSNL Chairman and Managing Director Ravi A. Robert Gerrard said , “This platform will be extremely helpful for customers seeking SIM swap without any geographical restrictions and will help in changing SIM profiles and remote file management on SIM cards.”

The platform will support both 4G and 5G networks in India, with the latter due to arrive within 6-8 months of BSNL achieving its 4G rollout target of March 2025. BSNL claims the platform will help bridge the digital divide in rural and remote areas. It is also claimed to be in line with the Indian government’s “Atmanirbhar Bharat” vision, which aims to make its citizens and the country self-reliant in every sense of the word .

BSNL will reportedly complete the full rollout of its 4G services by March 2025. Currently, the telecom provider has installed 15,000 network towers in areas such as Himachal Pradesh and western Uttar Pradesh. It is reportedly looking to ramp up by adding another 80,000 towers by October this year. Moreover, the cloud- based 4G core technology that currently powers the company’s network is said to be capable of supporting 5G services as well.

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