Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Tuesday, Nov 09, 2004
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Tuesday, Nov 09, 2004 |
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Info-Tech
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Telecommunications BSNL bags contract to install rural phones in 66,000 villages — To get subsidy from universal services obligation fund Thomas K. Thomas
New Delhi , Nov. 8 BHARAT Sanchar Nigam Ltd has bagged the contract for setting up rural telephones in 66,000 villages with support from the Universal Services Obligation (USO) fund. The state-owned company had competition from Bharti Tele-Ventures, which had bid for the project in three States. The villages, spread across 12 States, do not have any telephone connections as yet. Senior officials in the Department of Telecom (DoT) said that the agreement between the Government and BSNL is being signed for the project. Sources said that competitive bidding in three circles, where Bharti had also put in its bid, has brought down the cost by 15 per cent. The details of the contract are expected to be announced on Tuesday. The support from the USO fund comprises a front loaded subsidy and an equated annual subsidy over a period of five years. About 14,000 villages have to be covered with satellite technology for which BSNL will get a front loaded subsidy of Rs 1 lakh and another Rs 25,000 on installation. Earlier, BSNL and Reliance Infocomm had shared the contract for setting up community phones in 50,000 villages with support from the USO fund. While the two companies had separately bid for most of the villages, BSNL won the contract for rolling out community phones in two-thirds of the specified villages. In that instance, the competitive bidding had resulted in bringing down the cost of the project by about 20 per cent. The 50,000 villages identified were spread across 19 States and have a population of more than 2,000 people with no PCO facility yet. The USO fund administrator has also initiated the process for setting up telephones in village households. About 31-lakh such phones have already been set up. That apart, a tender for setting up tele-info centres in 40,000 villages is also under way. However, these plans may hit a bump with the Finance Ministry delaying release of money to the fund. As against an allocated amount of Rs 3,700 crore for last year, the USO fund has received only Rs 500 crore from the Ministry.
More Stories on : Telecommunications | Rural Development
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