Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Sunday, Jun 11, 2006
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Sunday, Jun 11, 2006 |
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Regulatory Bodies & Rulings Info-Tech - Telecommunications Industry & Economy - Rural Development DoT's rural dream may be sold short Thomas K Thomas
Muted ring DoT had expected to dole out Rs 8,000 crore from USO fund for 6-8 million phones by 2007. Operators have only four lakh subscribers till now
New Delhi , June 10 After failing to meet the Village Public Telephone targets, one of the Government's largest projects under the Universal Services Obligation for providing telephones in rural households seems to be under threat of falling short of the expected numbers. The Department of Telecom had expected to dole out Rs 8,000 crore from the Universal Services Obligation fund for rolling out between 6 million and 8 million phones by 2007. After a year since the scheme was announced, the operators have managed to get only fourlakh subscribers till now. In March last year, the Department of Telecom signed an agreement with three operators, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices to provide telephones to villagers across 274 districts. The project offered to reimburse the capital expenditure borne by the operator for every phone connection installed in any of the specified villages between April 2005 and March 2007. The operators on their part said that there was no obligation under the agreement except to offer 100 lines per district within the first six months of operation, which they claim to have achieved. While BSNL has 3.4 lakh subscribers under this scheme, Reliance has just over 30,000 rural households. Tatas have given connections to 26,000 subscribers.
Spread over 20 States
The USO project spread across 20 States aimed at reaching telephones to individual users. The VPT project, which was envisaged to offer telephones to a community, is still unfinished with about 40,000 villages yet to be covered. The VPT project had targeted covering six lakh villages by 2002. Analysts pointed out that with mobile services becoming popular, rolling out fixed-line telephones was not on the agenda of any of the operators. Therefore, any expectations set on the fixed line segment would be unrealistic. They said the Government's move to extend USO fund support to cellular telephony in rural villages would find more takers.
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