A one-stop solution to small and medium businesses and enterprises for their connectivity needs, with better manageability and network security.

That’s what the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is offering and Pune has been chosen for the pilot project.

BSNL chairman and managing director Kuldeep Goyal on Friday launched the Managed Network Services from Pune. Calling this service a 'new chapter' in the history of BSNL, Goyal said, “We chose Pune to run the project on a pilot basis, as we are sure of getting a good feedback here.”

Goyal said the pilot would later be extended outside Pune. “Till now, BSNL has been providing various services to its customers, but now, people want integrated solutions to their IT needs, which is what we are going to provide through this new service,” he said.

The service will be available in Pune, Nashik and Aurangabad on a pilot basis for a couple of months before it's extended to other parts of the country. However, the customers of the pilot project cities will get services across the country. The minimum tariff has been kept at Rs 7,999 per month.

“The assured service with fixed monthly charges and no capital expenditure investment will reduce the entry barrier to the customer and help in expanding our service. Initially, we are targeting 50 small and medium enterprises as our customers.” he added.

The integrated secured data service is actually a bundle of hardware, connectivity package and completely managed services, including the 24x7 proactive monitoring of customer network and remote configuration of troubleshooting.

BSNL has tied up with two private players- Cisco and Trimax IT Infrastructure & Services Ltd. While Cisco will provide end-equipment, Trimax will offer the actual service, including 24x7 proactive network monitoring and troubleshooting. BSNL has designed three packages, EntCom, BizCom and EasyCom, for different requirements of customers.

“As per the projections, the market opportunity in small and medium business and enterprise segment is huge and almost 62 per cent of customers from this segment want to have integrated services, which is why, we are targeting this segment,” Rajesh Chainani, senior vice-president of Cisco India, said.

BSNL chief general manager (Maharashtra circle) Chandra Prakash, principal general manager V K Mahindra, CEO of Trimax Suryaprakash Madrecha were also present on the occasion.

3G mobile service by December-end
Sharing BSNL’s other plans, BSNL CMD Kuldeep Goyal said that by December-end, BSNL would roll out 3G mobile services in the north India.

3G networks enable mobile phone users to access a wider range of more advanced services including wide-area wireless voice telephony, video calls and broadband wireless data.

“We are also looking at launching TelePresence, a new conferencing technology, which is an interesting combination of video, audio and interactive elements,” he said.