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Rural obligation: Paswan warns pvt operators

Our Bureau

HYDERABAD, Feb. 25

THE Union Communications Minister, Mr Ram Vilas Paswan, has said that all private basic telecom operators, who have not fulfilled their licence obligations of networking rural tracts, will either be penalised for delays or have their licences cancelled b y the Government.

Expressing concern over the poor response from the private basic telecom service providers, who have been given the mandate to provide connectivity in some of the rural areas in the country, Mr Paswan said ``unless this is done, the digital divide will c ontinue to widen.''

The Union Minister, interacting with the media after a meeting with the officials of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) here on Sunday, said for instance, Tata Teleservices, the private telecom services operator in Andhra Pradesh, had barely covered 10 vill ages as against the mandated 6,000 villages. On the other hand, BSNL, through AP Telecom, has networked all the 23,000 villages for which it had the mandate.

``The situation is no different in other telecom circles in the country. Out of the 58,000 villages which were to be networked by private telecom operators, barely 1,000 villages have been thus far connected with Bharti and Shyam Telecom networking about 10,000 villages,'' he said.

``If the private operators do not keep up to their licensing requirements, the Government will have no other option but to step in and see that these villages are covered and also invoke the necessary licensing terms by way of penalty or even cancellatio n of licences of these players,'' he said.

``Therefore, we have also suggested to TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) to pave the way for creation of a Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) from out of the licensing fee and other income so that these rural tracts can be covered with t his fund.''

Mr Paswan said the Chairman and Managing Director of BSNL, Dr D.P.S.Seth, had been directed to convene a meeting of all private telecom operators to take stock of the situation and work out a plan of action.

As against the 6.07 lakh villages, thus far, about four lakh villages have been covered. The rest are planned to be covered by the year 2002. ``By replacing the existing technologies and supplementing them with code division multiple access (CDMA)-based wireless in local poop (WLL) phones, we plan to reach out all the villages,'' he said.

In Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, Haryana, Punjab and Andaman & Nicobar Islands, all villages have been provided with telecom facility by the Department of Telecom.

``While the tele-density in the country has now been estimated at about three per cent, we plan to increase it to about seven per cent by 2005 and to about 17.5 per cent by 2010. This would entail an investment of about $37 billion by 2005 and $90 billio n by 2010,'' he said.``In all the rural areas which have the problem of telecom infrastructure and are difficult to service now, we plan to cover them with the new plan of extending limited mobility for the basic telecom operators. Though this move is be ing resisted by cellular services providers, we will go ahead with this initiative since it is the surest way to reach out to the rural areas,'' he said.

While stating BSNL will launch its WLL-based phones by the end of March, Mr Paswan said the BSNL cellular phone project in AP, which will cover nine cities -- Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Kakinada, Amalpuram, Tirupathi, Guntur, Rajahmundry and W arangal -- will take off by April.