The Hindu : BSNL to complete VPT quota by Jan. 2003

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Oct 12, 2002

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National

BSNL to complete VPT quota by Jan. 2003

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD OCT. 11. The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has been asked to prepare a `scheme' similar to a `turnkey project' to install Village Public Telephones (VPTs) in villages where the six private basic service providers are finding it difficult to implement, according to the Union Minister for Communications, Pramod Mahajan.

The BSNL is expected to submit its report to the Ministry in a month's time. The Government wants all VPTs to be installed by December 2003, Mr. Mahajan said here on Friday after inaugurating the 1,000th VPT installed by the Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL) at a village in Paderu mandal in Andhra Pradesh.

Mr. Mahajan said the cost, under the new proposal being formulated, would have to be met through contributions from the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund, private players themselves and partly from the Finance Ministry.

Later talking to presspersons, he said under the 1994 Telecom Policy six private companies— HFCL, Shyam Telecom, Bharti, Reliance, Tata Tele and Hughes — were awarded licences for offering basic services in various circles.

The main criterion for licencing was a combined commitment to install VPTs in 97,000 villages within three years.

However, no progress had been made except in the case of TTSL. All of them, including the Tata firm, cited reasons such as inaccessibility of remote villages and unviable nature of such operations.

On the other hand, the BSNL had executed 95 per cent of its commitment and only 30,000 of the five-lakh villages (assigned to the BSNL) were not yet covered.

The BSNL would complete its quota by January 2003, except in Jammu and Kashmir and the North East, where the work would be completed by August 15. Mr. Mahajan said his mission was to take information technology (IT) from cities to villages and from classes to masses.

His objective was to have 100 million telephones in the country by 2010.

`Cell One', cellular service of the BSNL, would be launched by the Prime Minister in Lucknow on October 19, Mr. Mahajan said, adding that he would launch the rural cell phone services in Maharashtra on October 21.

He said the BSNL submitted its tariff proposals to TRAI five days ago.

S. Ramakrishna, Managing Director, TTSL, said of their commitment to install 6,096 VPTs in Andhra Pradesh, it had found 1,976 inaccessible.

While it installed 1,262 VPTs in Andhra Pradesh, 307 more were in progress and 1,727 were being surveyed.

The final figure of `inaccessible' villages would be known only after that, he said. Its target was to complete 3,000 villages by March 2003.

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