For telecom players, it is North-East calling

Back in the day, at the end of each month, students from the North-East would line up at public call offices (PCOs) in the country’s metros for the customary call to their parents.

Most calls would be to ask for money to pay for their education, lodging, and other expenses.

The times have changed, thanks to a telecom revolution in the region. The PCOs are gone, and so have the money orders.

The mobile phone now doubles up for communication as well as financial transactions.

Earlier, while only State-run BSNL would operate in the region, private telecom players today would not want to miss any business opportunity in the region. In fact, for many telecom companies, the North-East promises to be the next big revenue generator. With the government’s backing, insurgencies, bad terrain, or difficulties due to inclement weather are a thing of the past.

The country’s top players — Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-Idea Cellular, and Reliance Jio — all have a significant presence in the region. Projects such as BharatNet, which aim to link every gram panchayat(GPs), promise to improve the connectivity in the future.

According to government sources, around 2,500 GPs have been covered under BharatNet in the region and are service-ready, and the rest would be linked by March 2019.

There are around 12,000 GPs in the whole region.

The government is spending around ₹15,000 crore to connect the region via various methods, including broadband, satellite, and TV Whitespace.

Alternative technologies

With the kind of undulating terrain that the region has, the government is also looking at using alternative technologies for connectivity, such as satellite linkage, and TV Whitespace. The government has already undertaken pilot projects for such alternative technologies.

Airtel has the biggest reach in the region currently, with more than 13.84 million customers (according to a July 2018 TRAI report).

The company has a network presence in over 58,000 towns and villages.

Company sources say Airtel plans to roll out 6,500 new mobile sites across the region to add to its network reach capacity and take high-speed data services deeper into rural areas.

“The deployment will take the number of Airtel mobile sites in the North-East to 25,000 and its fibre-footprint to 16,000 km,” an official said.

As part of the agreement with the Department of Telecom and the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF), Airtel is setting up over 2,000 mobile towers/sites in unconnected pockets of the region and will deliver telecom connectivity to citizens in over 2,100 villages.

New partners Vodafone and Idea together have more than 8.51 million subscribers, and the latest entrant, Reliance Jio, has around 6.70 million subscribers.

BSNL has more than 4 million subscribers and is part of most government-led projects, including the BharatNet.

And while there are around 18,000 towers and BTS sites in the region, there are still some hiccups when it comes to connectivity, especially in areas along the international border in Arunachal Pradesh, and in some parts of Assam and Meghalaya, which the government is taking care of in due course.

Meanwhile, giving fillip to local entrepreneurship, the government is giving projects to youth to set up common service centres and rural BPOs.

For instance, rural BPOs have come up in Guwahati (Assam), Imphal (Manipur) and Kohima (Nagaland).