BSNL On The Verge Of Shutting Down: It Has No Funds To Pay Employees Salaries

The oldest telecom operator in India, BSNL, is about to shut down its services. This is because of the financial crisis that the telecom operator is currently facing. Now, it was in the public domain that BSNL has been struggling for a while now. Ever since Reliance Jio was launched, BSNL or Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited is battling hard for existence.

BSNL is the only state-owned telecom operator in India which means that the government can bail them out if needed. However, the Indian government has saved BSNL several times. It is reported that BSNL is not even capable of paying its employees for the month of June.

BSNL may shut down soon; in serious financial trouble

At one point of time, BSNL was the only telecom operator in India which earned profits while every other operator was burning cash to gain customers.

Now, the tables have turned and the company is no more in a position to run daily operations. In fact, BSNL has reported profits of Rs. 10,000 crores per year and more previously. But now, the company has a debt of more than Rs. 13,000 crores.

It must also be noted, however, that BSNL is still the only telecom operator in some parts of India. This means that shutting down of BSNL will cut the connection between those parts of India to the rest of India.

In particular, you will only get BSNL network and SIM cards in the remote areas of Himachal Pradesh upwards of Shimla. Although, this will be an opportunity for Jio and others to start their operations in those areas.

Also, we know that every telecom operator in India is working on 5G and is running on 4G networks already. However, BSNL is still testing its 4G network and currently operates on 3G only. As a matter of fact, the BSNL financial crisis has worsened so much that the company had to request financial aid from the Indian government.

Also, the Indian Government has requested a loan of Rs. 850 crores from RBI to pay off salaries of BSNL employees for this month.

An additional loan of Rs. 2500 crores are also requested by BSNL. This loan has not been approved, however, which means that the company might shut shops soon. Also, we might see deep job cuts from BSNL in the coming weeks to sustain and cut costs.

If you are a BSNL customer, we would advise you to port to a different telecom operator because BSNL’s situation looks grave.