All villages in South to have phones by 2001: Paswan

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, MAY. 28. All the villages in the Southern States will have a telephone connection by the year 2001, the Union Communications Minister, Mr. Ram Vilas Paswan, announced here on Sunday.

Talking to presspersons after reviewing the performance of the A.P. Telecom Circle, Mr. Paswan said around one lakh villages in the country would get a telephone out of the more than three lakh villages which are yet to get one. The DoT was unable to meet the target of providing 45,000 rural connections last year, he admitted. Around 34,000 villages were provided with a phone connection.

"By the year 2002, not a single village in the country would be without a telephone," he declared. The Minister said the Multi Access Rural Radio (MARR) technology was found to be wanting in 50 per cent of the villages in North India and therefore, in more than one lakh villages, it will be replaced by the Wireless on Loopline Technology (WLL) by October-November this year.

However, the MARR was said to be working satisfactorily in 90 per cent of the villages in Andhra Pradesh. There were more than 2,32,000 villages which were without a telephone facility.

Pointing out that public grievances was one main area which needed greater focus from the Department, Mr. Paswan said a committee of three senior officials would go into this aspect and suggest measures to make the redressal system more effective. "It is not merely service alone but access to the individual which I am more interested," he said.

While a target of 45 lakh telephone connections was fixed for the year ending on March 31, the DoT had achieved a mark of over 49 lakh connections all over the country. The Minister said there was a need to raise the teledensity in the country from the present 2.6 per cent (rural figure at 0.6 per cent) which was way below the world average.

The DoT has chalked up plans to increase the teledensity to seven per cent by 2005 and 15 per cent by 2010. (In AP, it was 3.3 per cent with Hyderabad at 18 per cent).

Commending the performance of the A.P. Telecom Circle during the preceding year, Mr. Paswan said the region had surpassed its targets in all spheres including the new connections, STDs, local PCOs, new exchanges, and so on. There were around 6,000 villages in the State which were yet to get a phone connection.

"This work has been allotted to a private operator but the department is not just going to sit and watch, we will do something about this," he promised. Referring to the waiting list of 3.5 lakh phones in the State, the Minister wanted the connections to be given within six months.

The Chief General Manager, Mr. J. Ramanujam, sought more inventory from the headquarters in the form of cables and other necessary infrastructure to keep up with its rapid pace of growth. He also wanted the WLL technology to cover more rural areas in the State.

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Section  : Southern States
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