The Hindu Business Line : Low-cost handset to spur new wave of mobile telephony: Maran

"This low-price entry into mobile use, along with our strategy to focus on smaller less obvious markets, will be a key driver for increasing the tele-density in the State," the BPL Mobile Chairman and Managing Director, Mr Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said.

The company plans to extend its network to cover 100 new towns and 780 villages this year.

Mr Chandrasekhar said BPL Mobile would enhance its capacity to cater to one million new users this year.

Presiding over the function, the Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Mr Dayanidhi Maran, said the low-cost handset would spur a new wave of mobile telephony.

Stating that mobile service in the country is among the cheapest in the world, Mr Maran emphasised the need to remove artificial barriers to reduce long distance telephony rates. He appealed to private operators to follow BSNL in providing borderless roaming service.

Mr Maran said rural telecom service is being given more impetus by the Government. The Centre has already provided rural community phones in 5.34 lakh villages out of six lakh villages. The remaining 66,000 villages will get the connection within three years.

The Centre is providing funds to State Governments as part of its e-governance plan to upgrade connectivity to 2 MBPS (million bits per second) from 64 KBPS up to the block level. "Fourteen State Governments have given the proposal for getting fund support from the Centre," said Mr Maran and pointed out that BSNL offered to waive 90 per cent of fees for their lease lines.

The community service centre is another e-governance plan. The Ministry proposes to provide one lakh Internet kiosks by 2007 in rural areas to enable the public transact online.

The Minister said over 2,000 towns have been brought under cellular coverage in the last one year, against 1,702 till a year ago.

A rollout plan has been prepared for providing broadband on demand in 200 towns the next one year, Mr Maran said and added that four crore connections would be given within the next 12 months.

Conceding that the rural areas did not get adequate attention from the service providers, Mr Maran said the Ministry is examining a proposal to provide passive shared infrastructure for mobile service operators in the rural areas from the Universal Service Obligation Fund.

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