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Workshop on mass telecom

Our Bureau

NEW DELHI, May 20

THE Telecom Industry and Services Association of India (TISA) is organising a national workshop on `Achieving mass communication through various modern payphone options' on May 30 to deliberate on the various alternatives available for achieving the requ ired teledensity.

According to Mr P. Sandell, President, TISA, one of the major tasks is how to ensure telecommunication can reach the rural areas of the country with low capital cost and hence at an affordable rate for the common man.

``The PCO/STD/ISD operators scheme are based on individual franchising and therefore, deployment of payphone service facility was at a slow rate. Even then, there are more than six lakh PCO operators who, as a result of severe economic factors, find that their survival is under threat. Hence the country needs to fall back on alternative payphone options,'' he said. ``This is a must if we have to provide enough phones in semi-urban and urban areas.''

For example, he noted, the spread of paging services could not take place because there were not enough PCOs, payphone operators in the service areas.

``Today, it is necessary to think of various options whereby both the paging services, as well as bulk payphone services are encouraged to operate together in the same area which means that instead of a system of individual franchising for payphones, we have a system of bulk franchising paging service providers so that these companies set up their payphone networks also.''

The national workshop will discuss all the options available and will find tremendous scope of business in the presentations to be made by experts, he said.