Comments
The Government is considering the use of solar energy to tide over power deficiency impeding the installation of mobile phone towers in tribal and hilly areas, the Rajya Sabha was informed today.
“We have to solarise the mobile towers,” the Minister of State of IT and Telecommunication, Mr Sachin Pilot, said during Question Hour.
He said power shortage in some states is impeding the installation of towers and added that the Government is looking at various options, including public private partnership, to make up for the deficiency.
The Minister said while 604 towers of BSNL installed in the tribal areas of Orissa have already been activated, 46 out of 1,023 towers in Jharkhand and 107 out of 759 towers in Chhattisgarh are still be activated. He assured the members that this will be done by June 2011.
Mr Pilot said 98 per cent villages in Jharkhand have already been given rural telephone connections besides some satellite phones.
Replying to supplementaries about decline in the number of landline telephone connections, the Minister said the phenomenon is due to abundant availability of mobile telephony. He said telephone density in the country has risen to 66 per cent from a mere 7 per cent in 2004.
The Minister acknowledged there are some constraints in the installation of mobile towers in the North East because of tough terrain. He said the Government has asked BSNL to install towers there as private operators are hesitant to go.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.