State police to port over 38,000 SIM cards from BSNL to Reliance Jio

It is purely a commercial decision to increase efficiency of the network available for an emergency service like the police, says senior official

The Karnataka State police have decided to port to Reliance Jio from the State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) for all their 38,000-odd official mobile phone SIM cards. This has drawn the ire of many, mainly the BSNL Employees’ Union. 

The Hindu accessed a circular issued by the Additional Director General of Communication, Logistics and Modernisation, on Monday, informing all the heads of units about the government approval for change of service provider from BSNL to Reliance Jio and that the transformation will happen in phases. There are a total of 38,347 connections. 

A senior official said it was “purely a commercial decision to increase efficiency of the network available for an emergency service like the police”. “A majority of these 38,000 connections are in remote rural areas where officers complain of lack of good network coverage. These days, the police need to transfer data including locations, photos, and videos on their mobile phones. Data speed of the existing service provider is woeful. While private firms are offering 5G services, BSNL is yet to offer even 4G services. For an emergency service like us, this is crippling,” he said. The officer claimed that Reliance Jio was selected as an alternate service provider after a commercial evaluation according to Karnataka Transparency in Public Procurement Act, 1999. 

However, the BSNL Employees’ Union alleged that this decision was only the latest instance of the government promoting Reliance Jio in the telecom sector at the cost of its own BSNL. “The Karnataka police is not the first to tread this path. Many Union government departments, including the Indian Railways and the Telangana police, have been directed to switch to Reliance Jio and now it’s the turn of Karnataka,” said Gundanna C.K., general secretary, BSNL Employees’ Union.

Mr. Gundanna also alleged that the Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) had been a victim of deliberate apathy by the government to shut it down and promote the private sector. “The government recently brought in a Voluntary Retirement Scheme under which nearly 80,000 employees retired, leaving the organisation severely crunched for human resources. The government has not invested to augment infrastructure and it has not even allowed BSNL to provide 4G services, when the government is itself auctioning 5G spectrum to private players. This is a deliberate act,” he alleged.