Board of Directors

Chairman & Managing Director- Shri R.K. Upadhyay

Mr. Rakesh Kumar Upadhyay has been working as Chairman & Managing Director of BSNL (A Government of India Enterprise) since 30th April 2011. He joined the Department of Telecommunications, Government of India, in 1975 as an Indian Telecom Service (ITS) Officer and has accomplished about 37 years of distinguished service in the telecom sector in various offices and Public Sector Undertakings under Ministry of Communications and IT. Before joining BSNL, he worked as CMD of Telecommunications Consultants India Ltd. (TCIL), another Government of India Enterprise, from March, 2007 to April, 2011. In TCIL, he held several important positions, such as Group General Manager (New Technology), Executive Director (Project Monitoring) and Director (Projects). As its CMD, he has to his credit the turnaround of TCIL.

He is a B.Tech in Electronics Engineering from I.T., B.H.U. (Passed with Honours). He is also a graduate of Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), Wellington. He was awarded M.Sc.(DS) Degree by Madras University. He has also completed MBA in Marketing Management. During the course of service, he has gained valuable and diverse experience in areas of Planning, Installation and Commissioning, Commercial Administration and Operations. He has handled important foreign assignments at Sana, Yemen and Algeria while working in TCIL. Some of the notable projects successfully implemented under his guidance are Pan African e-Network Project – Providing Tele-Education and Tele-Medicine Services to 34 African Nations from seven Universities and 12 Super Specialty Hospitals of India; This project is having a far reaching societal impact on the lives African Citizens in the fields of Medical-health & Education. This project has won prestigious international awards accolades. He has handled other projects viz National Internet Backbone Project; SAARC e-Network Project; Optical Ground Wire Project over 3000 Kilometer Electrical Transmission Lines in live-line conditions in Algeria.

BSNL, which he is currently heading as CMD, is one of the largest and the leading Public Sector Units providing comprehensive range of telecom services in India. BSNL has set up a world class multi-gigabit, multi-protocol IP infrastructure that provides convergent services like voice, data & video through the same Backbone & Broadband Access Network. The Company has vast experience in planning, installation, network integration & maintenance of switching & transmission networks & also has a world class ISO 9000 certified Telecom Training Institute. BSNL annual turnover is approx. 6 Billions US$.

BSNL has installed massive, high-quality telecom network all over the country and is currently focusing on further expansion and improving quality of service, particularly in rural areas of the country. It is actively engaged in introducing new services with ICT applications in villages across the country. BSNL has a network of 37,074 Digital Exchanges, with 28,139 Exchanges in rural areas, 5,77,524 Village Public Telephones (VPTs), OFC Network of 7,09,703 Route Kms, M/W Network of 50,430 Route Kms and 197 Satellite Earth Stations. BSNL’s 43.74 million lines basic telephones, 8.83 million WLL, 72.60 million GSM, 68,162 GSM BTSs, 12,071 CDMA Towers, connecting 623 districts, 7330 cities/towns and 5.8 lakhs villages in the country. are testimony to its size and reach. BSNL is the only service provider which is making sustained efforts and undertaking planned initiatives to bridge the rural-urban digital divide in ICT sector. In fact, there is no telecom operator in the country which can compete with BSNL’s reach. Whether it is inaccessible areas of Siachen glacier or North-Eastern regions of the country, BSNL serves its customers with a bouquet of telecom services, namely, Wire-line, CDMA mobile, GSM mobile, Internet, Broadband, Carrier service, MPLS-VPN, VSAT, VoIP, IN Services, FTTH, etc. BSNL enjoys numero uno position in all services in its license area. The Company offers wide-ranging and transparent tariff schemes designed to suit every customer segment. It has over 90 million cellular and over 5 million WLL customers. In basic services, the Company’s market share is miles ahead of its competitors, with 24.58 million wireline phone subscribers, i.e. 71.93% share of the wireline subscriber base. During the 2010-11, BSNL had a turnover of nearly Rs. 29,700 Crores.