Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is planning to raise about Rs 60 billion by selling its land property holdings and leasing its 73,000 mobile towers, in a move to meet its capex requirements. The move is in line with the company’s target of achieving 45 per cent revenue growth over the next five years.

It has been estimated that sale of BSNL's land assets can generate over Rs 40 billion while sharing and leasing of its passive infrastructure like towers can generate revenues of Rs 16 billion.  The company is one of the largest land-bank holders with properties across 3,500 towns in the country. Apart from this, BSNL is looking to leverage its tower infrastructure as nearly 50,000 of its tower portfolio are connected through optic fibre cable, which can support high-speed data services. In addition, leasing of its telecom factories and training facilities is likely to garner Rs 2 billion over the next two years.

The fund raising is part of BSNL’s target to spend Rs 394.68 billion on capex over the next five years to upgrade its nationwide landline, mobile and broadband networks. BSNL is also planning to provide broadband connectivity to all its exchanges. The company is planning to rollout fibre-to-the-home  network across 172 cities offering speeds up to 1 Gbps.