[6] Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited is an Indian government enterprise and its history can be traced back to British India.

[7] Until early 2000s, BSNL is the only service provider for Indian Railways to control and administrative communication circuits later, they are separated as Railtel.

[8][9] BSNL provides both fixed line telephones and mobile telephony services on the GSM platform.

Only the Government-owned BSNL and MTNL were allowed to provide land-line phone services through copper wire in the country.

[11] BSNL Broadband provides telecom services to enterprise customers including MPLS, P2P and Internet leased lines.

It provides fixed-line services and landline using CDMA technology and its own extensive optical fiber network.

BSNL has said that its optic fiber network provides fixed access to deliver high-speed Internet up to 300 Mbit/s.

Currently, it has an optical fibre erble network of over 6.83 lakh kilometre.er BSNL started 4G service in some parts of India such as Bihar, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh in January 2019, but it is limited to a few cities and towns.

[20] On behalf of the government of India, the Minister of Communications Ashwini Vaishnaw announced that the State-Owned Telco would start its 5G operations by 15 August 2023.

[21][22][23][24] In November 2024, BSNL introduced and made a trial of the new Direct-to-Device technology for the first time in India in partnership with VIASAT.

[29] Each circle is headed by a Chief General Manager (CGM) who is an officer of Indian Telecom Service (ITS).

On 24 October 2019, the Government of India announced a revival package for BSNL and MTNL which includes monetizing assets, raising funds, TD-LTE spectrum, and a voluntary retirement scheme for employees.

[34][35] In July 2017, BSNL suffered a cyberattack, in Karnataka, when malware affected the telco's broadband network using modems with default passwords.

Later, BSNL issued an advisory notice to its broadband customers, urging them to change their default router username and passwords.