Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Wednesday, Nov 19, 2003
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Wednesday, Nov 19, 2003 |
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Info-Tech
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Telecommunications Pvt basic operators escape village phone targets — Unified licence bypasses obligations G. Rambabu
New Delhi , Nov 18 RELIANCE Infocomm, Tata Teleservices and Shyam Telelink have managed to escape their rural telephony commitments by migrating to a unified access service licence, just weeks before their latest deadline of end-December which had been set by the Department of Telecommunication (DoT). According to official sources, although these companies, along with Bharti Telnet, had to connect close to 35,000 villages in their circles of operation as per the roll-out obligations of their basic licences, they will no longer be pressured by the DoT, since the roll-out conditions of the unified licence are akin to that of the cellular services. Once Bharti too migrates to a unified licence, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) will be forced to step in and invest in setting up village public telephones (VPT) in these unremunerative areas. While it would be to the benefit of the private operators, since they are no longer obliged to make these investments, BSNL, which has been facing a severe resource crunch on account of competition in basic in long distance services, will have to rework its budget in the weeks to come. Although all rural telephony projects are eligible for reimbursement from the universal service obligation fund set up for the purpose, if past experience is anything to go by, BSNL alone will seek to fulfil its social commitments, they said. The sources noted that except for HFCL Infotel Ltd in Punjab, the remaining four private operators who had started their operations in the first lot of basic licences, issued close to six years ago, were not able to cover the stipulated 50 per cent of the uncovered villages in their service areas by their earlier deadline of end-June 2003. As a result, the deadline had to be extended to December. The DoT, in a letter to all the operators, had stated that this was the last time that an extension is being granted, and had set the new deadline to complete the task of connecting all villages, except for the naxalite-affected, and zero population towns. HFCL Infotel has managed to get out of the loop, thanks to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), which fulfilled all its targets. The rest of the private operators, however, were not so lucky. As of now with a new licence regime in place, except for Bharti Telenet which has not converted its licence in Madhya Pradesh to a unified licence, the VPT targets for the rest have all but been forgotten, they said. To date, Reliance has set up over 4,000 VPTs in Gujarat, Tata Teleservices has set up over 3,000 VPTs in Andhra Pradesh and around 2,000 VPTs in Maharashtra. Bharti and Shyam Telecom too have provided more than 1,000 VPTs in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. These operators had committed to set up public telephones in 97,806 villages by the year 2000. However, unable to do so, each passing year, the DoT collected liquidated damages from them and extended their deadline.
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