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Thomas K. Thomas

USO fund to help create infrastructure provider cos in rural areas

New Delhi , April 21

Rural consumers will soon get access to mobile phones with the Government proposing to make it mandatory for cellular operators rolling out services with the support of the Universal Services Obligation (USO) fund to cover the areas for which they bid within one year after the agreement is signed.

The Department of Telecom (DoT), has also decided that up to three mobile operators will be given support from the USO fund in each district. As part of the project to cover rural India through cellular technology, the Government has also proposed creation of infrastructure provider companies in rural areas with support from the USO fund.

EoIs invited

The Government has also invited expression of interest (EoI) from global consultants to act as its advisors for both financial and technical aspects of the project. The USO fund administrator is expected to finalise the details of the project and invite bids from operators to roll out mobile services in rural areas on the advice of the appointed consultants. Consulting firms have been given time till May 8 to put in their EoIs for the project.

Bids will be invited in two parts. One will be for setting up the cellular infrastructure in a district and the second bid will be for access service providers whereby three companies will be selected. The three operators will be allowed to share the infrastructure. The USO fund will be used to support both shared and non-shared infrastructure. In the proposed project, bids are likely to be invited using the district as the unit as against the earlier norm of inviting bids using the tehsil as the unit in the case of rural fixed line telephony.

Stringent conditions

DoT has set stringent conditions for the operators such as ensuring a minimum of 90 per cent coverage in an area. It has also stipulated that the height of the tower should be at 50 meters and the distance between any two towers shall be 8-10 km. The infrastructure company will have to install at least 30 per cent of the towers in the District within a four-month period, another 30 per cent within 8 months and the remaining 40 per cent within 12 months of signing the agreement. The three successful operators will be provided 70 per cent of the expense at the time of commercial start of service and the remaining after 100 telephones are provided.

More Stories on : Telecommunications | Rural Development

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