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Thomas K Thomas

New Delhi, Sept. 22 The rural mobile project supported by the Government’s Universal Services Obligation fund may get delayed, with operators so far meeting only 50 per cent of the targeted coverage after 15 months of launching the project.

While the operators, who had won the contract through competitive bidding held in 2007, were supposed to have rolled out mobile services through 2,307 base stations in various parts of the country by July 2008, only 1,000 mobile towers have been operationalised. State-owned BSNL, Reliance Communications and Vodafone were among those who had won the contract in March 2007.

While the telecom companies have blamed threat from naxalites, poor weather and tough terrain for the slow progress, the Department of Telecom hauled up the service providers at a recent meeting to check the implementation status.

“The USO fund administrator expressed concern over the non-seriousness of the operators and the infrastructure companies over very slow progress made by them, especially BSNL, as the State-owned company is responsible for almost 80 per cent of the roll-out,” said a Government official. This comes even as the Government is in the process of undertaking the second phase of taking mobile phones to rural areas.

The first phase, which had received huge response from private operators during the bidding process, envisages rolling out cellular infrastructure across 500 districts covering 2.5 lakh villages with a combined population of over 2 million people. This was supposed to be done by setting up 8,000 mobile towers by July 2008 with financial support from the USO fund.

BSNL had bagged the contract for setting up 6,125 mobile towers out of the 8,000 towers. However, by July 2008, it the had set up only 102 towers.

Among the private companies, GTL Infrastructure got the contract to set up 471 towers of which it has set up 371.

Reliance Infrastructure is supposed to roll out 472 towers of which it has completed 245. Hutchison South, which has since been acquired by Vodafone, had emerged the lowest bidder for 331 towers and has completed work in 242 sites. Quippo had rolled out 84 of the 88 towers it is supposed to set up.

DoT had earlier said that all the 8,000 towers should be set up within a year of signing the contract agreement.

BSNL officials said that most of the towers would be set up by December 2008 as they had acquired lease deed for about 4,800 sites, completed tower foundation in about 2,000 sites and 331 towers are being erected. Private companies have also assured the Government that their part of the project would be completed within the next month.

More Stories on : Rural Development | Telecommunications

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