Vision and Mission

Vision: It is defined as an organization’s dream, which it wants to realize in the long run say 5-10 years
time frame. A dream which; a company sincerely attempts to make a reality. While it is not necessary to
have a Vision statement, it makes sense to have one so that all efforts, energy and resources get directed in
realizing this Vision. Applying this concept to an individual’s life, it implies that each one of us want to see
ourselves leading a better life in future. While everybody’s yardstick of better life would be different, the
fact remains that all expect such results. For example, parents want to see their son/daughter as successful
in life and attempt to give them education/training accordingly.

Mission: Mission is the path taken to realize the Vision. For example if leading a prosperous life after
graduation is the vision of parents for their son, mission could be to get the son admitted in an engineering
college so as to realize that vision.

Explanation: If one does not have a vision, life is a journey led by circumstances and the results have to be
taken as the desired outcome. If parents do not communicate their vision & mission to their daughter, the
probability of their daughter making efforts to get admission in medical college would be vague. Not just
communication of vision and mission but understanding & accepting it is more important. If daughter is not
interested in medical, what motivation and drive can be expected of her to achieve that vision through that
mission? Similarly, if each employee does not know an organization’s vision & mission or does not believe
in it, one cannot expect internal drive among employees and synergy in efforts to realize that Vision.

BSNL also has its Vision and Mission statement (revised in 2007) as given below:
Vision: To become the largest telecom Service Provider in Asia.
Mission:
I. To provide world class State-of-art technology telecom services on demand at competitive prices.
II. To Provide world class telecom infrastructure in its area of operation and to contribute to the
growth of the country's economy
Comments on BSNL Vision
Vision seeks to become the largest Telecom service provider in Asia. The word largest needs to be
understood. Is largest denotes network, customer base, revenue, profit, range of services provided, number
of exchanges etc. No doubt a balanced growth for all parameters is required.
Comments on BSNL Mission
 World Class State of art technology: This poses the issue of managing technology obsolescence,
timely planning and procurement, proper training for running the network.
 On demand: This has to be thoroughly examined, on demand in which areas, which service, what
about profitability, financial viability etc. How much capacity needs to planned and procured.
Telecom being a capital intensive sector, the implications are very high.
 Competitive: For which segment of customers we want to be competitive. Who are our
competitors? Paying capacity varies as per economic profile of customers. Low price some times
is considered to indicate low quality, which poses a challenge to the marketer.
Telecom Scenario

BSNL came in to existence in September 2000 and started its operations on 1st October 2000 when it took
over all assets and liabilities pertaining to telecom operations & services from Department of Telecom
Services/Department of Telecom Operations (commonly known as DoT). Since 1991, Indian Telecom
sector has seen unprecedented growth. From a monopoly to multi operator, multi services, multi
technology, multi vendor scenario, the journey has been very fast paced. Department of telecom making
over its function of regulation to TRAI (1997), dispute resolution to TDSAT (2000) and service provider

Total market share for all type of services

BSNL/MTNL
13.44
BSNL/MTNL Reliance
13.64 20.27
Reliance 14.15
Bharti
8.75
14.73
Bharti 8.1 Vodafone
47.52 16.65
Hutch
7.41
Tata
5.27
30.07
Idea
Others
Others
role to BSNL (2000), the path has been adventurous. DoT had to introduce a technology neutral regime by
offering UASL. The tele density growth is unprecedented, exceeding the projections of NTP 1999 to
achieve 10 by 2007 and 15 by 2010 well before time. While customer has no doubt benefited by latest
technology at world’s lowest tariff, sector has posed immense challenge to service providers to capture
market share and achieve profits with high volume low margin game. Leading private operators are now
declaring growing profits year after year.

Source: Voice & Data Magazine July 2007

Oct 2005, Total-11,61,64,424 Aug 2007, Total-24,10,20,957

BSNL-42.88%,MTNL-4.64% BSNL-27.34%,MTNL-2.73%
BSNL being the incumbent operator was bound to loose market share. Growth within BSNL had been
phenomenal though not at par with market growth. A look at the market share statistics above speaks for
itself.

The below given revenue figures of BSNL from various services will prompt you to decide for yourself
about the areas of focus and needed short term and long term strategy for action. (figures are in crore Rs)

2005 2006 2007

•Landlines 15593.96 14527.24 16604.99
•PCOs 6259.13 5893.78 (included above)
•Mobile 3792.02 6433.72 9264.63
•Circuits 420.96 529.94 512.68
•WLL 347.00 481.66 568.05
•Broadband 4.18 162.45 513.84
 Receipt from 6971.83 6146.19
other operators
2000-01 2001-02 2002-03 2003-04 2004-05 2005-06 2006-07
Revenue 19814 22000 25293 31400 33450 40177 39715
Net Profit 747 6312 1444 5976 10183 8939 7805

REGULATION IN CHANGED SCENARIO

The only infrastructure sector which is booming is telecom. Much of the credit goes to its regulator, Trai,
which has provided an enabling atmosphere for all the players to compete. It enjoys the full support of the
government which through various corrections in policy has from time to time been supplementing. Trai’s
initiatives. Though Trai was formed in March 1997. The first regulation of Trai came out only in March
1999 in the form of a Telecom Tariff Order 1999. It is now a ten year old organization. And a lot has
happened during this period. The fixed line network has grown from 14.54 million in 1997 to 40.75
million in 2007, even though from 2003 onwards the growth has been flat or rather negative as the
consumers have been shifting towards mobile services. However, the subscriber base of mobile service is
growing rapidly. From 0.34 million in 1997 it has grown to 165.11 in 2007 with almost 6 to 2007 with
almost 6 to 7 million new additions being reported every month. Because of this level of growth, Chennai
has turned out to be the first city in the country to have crossed a teledensity of 100 per cent and Delhi at 97
per cent is likely to cross that mark in next 4-5 months.
In the present scenario of multiplicity of telecom operators offering an enormous range of basic and value
added services, an effective mechanism for prevention of cartelization and unreasonable tariffs and
protection of consumer interests has to be set up. Besides this, effective steps should be taken for
maintaining equity of presence of services among all the sections of society irrespective of regional
affiliations. In other words, services should not gain concentration in revenue rich urban areas only, but
should also be available to our rural masses, which constitutes 70% of our nation’s population.
However, the gap between haves and have-nots is big and it has further widened because of rapid growth in
the urban areas compared to a nominal growth in rural areas. With overall teledensity at about 21 per cent,
the teledensity in rural area is about 2 per cent compared to nearly 55 per cent in urban areas. The gap is
27.5 times. In 1997it was 4.76 per cent urban and 0.34 per cent in rural area i.e. a gap of 14 times.
Within a decade of Trai’s existence, teledensity has grown almost eleven times from 1.56 per cent in March
1997to 16.83 per cent in March 2007. In five months thereafter, the teledensity has crossed 21 per cent in
August 2007, indicating further acceleration in the growth.
The USO Fund Administrator is making efforts to provide support for rollouts in rural areas. In identified
rural areas it is providing subsidy to operators who have rolled out their networks in rural areas since April
1, 2005. The operators were selected through an open bidding process; whosoever quoted the lowest
subsidy got the contract. The payment of subsidy will continue till March 2010. In April 2007, it also
rolled out another project which will provide financial support to operators for setting up 7,871 towers of
40 to 60 meter high in the rural areas. Each of these towers will be shared by three operators. The
agreements have been executed with the successful operators selected through open bidding process. The
project is targeted to be implemented in 9-12 months.
Trai on its part has to be watchful. It has to ensure that the operators do not cartelize and hike the tariff
without any basis. In August this year, all the three private GSM operators of Delhi hiked their tariff by 20
to 32.5 per cent simultaneously to the same level. Trai did not do any thing except asking them certain
routine questions. Trai should also ensure that the calling from mobile to fixed lines are not kept at a higher
level compared to mobile to mobile calls, as has been noticed in many cases of tariff plans of different
operators. The private operators are intentionally doing it to cause harm to BSNL and MTNL, which has
the majority of fixed lines.
.
In a scenario where a customer is free to choose his telecom operator among a multiplicity of service
providers, each operator or more precisely, an access provider has its own group of customers. In order to
connect two customers of different service providers seamlessly, the corresponding service providers must
have interconnection between their respective networks. Since these service providers are also competitors,
there must be a a policy-making body who set the terms (for instance revenue sharing, QoS standards etc.)
of such interconnectivity, and a regulatory body to oversee the implementation of these policies and
adherence to these policy standards.