You lost me at Hello: North-East border regions struggle to make calls

Switch on your mobile phone near the border in Arunchal Pradesh, Meghalaya or Assam, and chances are you will get messages saying ‘Welcome to China’ and ‘Welcome to Bangladesh’. It’s obvious the Centre’s North-East telecom project is yet to take off.

As part of the NDA government’s first ambitious plans, the Cabinet had cleared the North-East telecom project in 2014, and the tender was opened in August 2016.

The Department of Telecom (DoT), however, appears to have been dragging its feet over providing mobile connectivity in the areas bordering China and Bangladesh for the past four years.

In October 2016, the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF), which is under the DoT’s ambit, brought in new norms. In February 2017, it ordered the retesting of equipment. Since then, the USOF has been imposing new conditions that have been delaying the project further.

Question of intent

Ninong Ering, MP from Arunachal Pradesh, has been writing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as the concerned ministries about the delay.

On April 4, he wrote to Cabinet Secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha, marking copies to Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha and Secretary Aruna Sundararajan, saying the delay “brings the role of the USOF administrator under suspicion”.

“It seems that the intention was never to get the project completed on time. That is why he (USOF administrator) keeps imposing new conditions even though they are outside the tender conditions and against CVC (Central Vigilance Commission) guidelines,” he wrote.

Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju has also been shooting off letters. In December, he wrote to Sinha, requesting him to intervene and issue suitable directions to the officers concerned for “expeditious execution of the project so as to check any further delay”.

Little progress

Speaking to BusinessLine from Arunachal Pradesh, MP Ering said: “I have been writing to them for the last two-three years, but there is no progress yet. Today, I am lucky that we could speak for a while, as most of the time, it is just ‘hello, hello’ from both the sides and many times not even that.”

It is vital to have a good network in the region, considering the Chinese one works in the border areas of Arunachal Pradesh, but the Indian one doesn’t, he observed.

A ‘Welcome to China’ message suddenly pops up in the border areas, reflecting the poor mobile connectivity in the State, he wrote in his letter.

In the border regions of Assam and Meghalaya, it’s ‘Welcome to Bangladesh’. This is because Indian networks in those regions are very weak, or absent, and the phone picks up international roaming, according to experts.

Border restrictions

Rajan Mathews, Director General of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), said putting up towers in the North-East comes with its own challenges.

International roaming kicks in because domestic players are not allowed to put up towers within a particular distance from the border, whereas there is no such restriction on the other side. “It (having a strong network near the border) is good for them (neighbouring countries) as they can monitor areas where they have an interest,” Mathews pointed out.

While private companies such as Bharti Airtel have acquired the mandate for towers in some parts of the North-East, not all areas can be penetrated by towers, especially in deep forests. Alternatives such as optical fibre have to be explored.

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