The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Coimbatore News : Focus on improving teledensity: Maran

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Friday, May 27, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

Focus on improving teledensity: Maran

Staff Reporter

The Ministry plans to provide 25-crore connections in three years

`Every new connection in rural areas helped augment the per capita income of an individual by 1.5 per cent'

COIMBATORE: To enhance teledensity in rural areas, the Centre is planning to provide "passive common resources" for all private players, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology Dayanidhi Maran said here on Wednesday.

Speaking to reporters after reviewing arrangements for the zonal conference of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on the outskirts of the city, he said the country had only 10-crore telephone connections (5.5-crore mobile connections and the rest basic landlines) and the Ministry was working to reach the 25-crore mark within the next three years.

The teledensity stood at 28 per 100 in urban areas and one or two per 100 in rural areas and the irony was that 70 per cent of the country still lived in its villages, he said.

Every new connection in rural areas helped augment the per capita income of an individual by 1.5 per cent; hence the thrust for enhancing teledensity in rural areas.

Passive common resources

"Since private telecom service providers are no longer required to roll out network in rural areas, the Ministry was thinking of providing passive common resources like land and tower for them."

Ten per cent of the licence fee of private operators would be diverted for the creation of these common resources. But, the Ministry would not allow sharing or utilisation of the BSNL's infrastructure in rural areas.

To ensure "technology-neutral services" in rural areas, the Ministry was not thrusting any particular technology on the people and wanted every technology to be made available everywhere to give the "rural masses a technology of their choice".

`Breaking the barriers'

He said the recent initiative of his Ministry to break "artificial barriers" would be beneficial to subscribers. As the barriers existed only in a few States, there would not be any major revenue implications.

By breaking more such "barriers", the Ministry was working to fulfil the dream of ``One India'', so that phone users could call up anywhere in India, right from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, at local call rates.

Objective

Such measures would encourage more people to use phones, especially mobile phones.

The objective was to make phones replace post cards, he said.

In the next step, the Ministry would even provide access to mobile phones from Village Public Telephones.

The Ministry was aware of policy restrictions and these would be phased out shortly, he said.

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