The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : 'India way behind developed countries in teledensity'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 18, 2006

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

'India way behind developed countries in teledensity'

Staff Reporter

Union Government aims at increasing the telephone subscriber base

ALL SMILES: (From left) D.B. Narasappanavar, Muralidhara K. and M.Sudheendran greeting one another after receiving the Vishist Sanchar Seva Padak in Bangalore on Wednesday. — Photo: K. Bhagya Prakash

BANGALORE: Even as the teledensity is growing at a fast pace, the country still has a long way to catch up with the developed countries, according to chief general manager of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (Karnataka Telecom Circle) S. Ramaganapathy said.

Speaking at a function to present the Bharat Sanchar Shree, Vishist Sanchar Seva Padak, Bharat Sanchar Sarathy and Sanchar Seva Padak awards on Wednesday, Mr. Ramaganapathy said the phenomenal growth in the mobile sector had been able to reduce the gap between the developed countries and the developing countries from a factor of 27 in 1994 to a factor of less than 4 in 2006. This was in contrast to the slow fixed lines growth, where the gap had been reduced from a factor of 11 to less than 4, he said.

The Union Government, he said, had plans to increase the telephone subscriber base, which includes fixed lines and CDMA WLL, to 250 million by December 2007. It had also planned to ramp up the broadband customer base to about 20 million by 2010.

He said that even if these plans were fulfilled by the targeted dates, the country would still lag behind the world average in terms of teledensity as well as broadband penetration. Broadband and high-speed Internet access was important for transforming the information society in terms of enhancement of country's social and economic development.

The BSNL's market share in Karnataka was 73.5 per cent in fixed line, 28 per cent in mobile and more than 80 per cent in broadband/Internet user base. In Karnataka, the mobile subscriber base was about 5 million and the fixed line subscriber base 3.7 million, he said.

The following were presented the awards:

Vishist Sanchar Seva Padak: D.B. Narasappanavar of Dharwad Telecom district, Muralidhara K. of Bangalore Telecom district and M. Sudheendran, Surveyor of Works (Electrical), Chief Engineer (Electrical) office.

Sanchar Shree Awards: Prem Kumar of Bangalore Telecom district, S.F. Dyavanagoudar and S.B. Munavalli of Dharwad Telecom district and P.R. Joshi of Belgaum Telecom district.

Bharat Sanchar Sarathy: K. Sumitra Devi, S. Govinda Raju, Vidya A. Joshi and Shamshad Hussain H.A., all from Bangalore Telecom district.

Sanchar Seva Padak Award: M. Rajkumar and G. Venkatesh Murthy of Bangalore Telecom district, G. Lokesh from JTO Circle Office and M.R. Nagaraj from CAO Circle office.

The best Secondary Switching Area award given for best revenue generation was presented to Dakshina Kannada Telecom district. The best customer service centre award was bagged by the Indiranagar service centre here.

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