DoT plans to extend mobile coverge to 200,000 villages

The department of telecom is preparing to launch the second phase of mobile phone expansion covering around two lakh villages in the country. 

With this, villages with a population of 500 can expect to have acess to mobile services, for which another 11,000 towers will require to be installed.

Acording to the ministry of communications and IT, the details locations of the towers being identified for installation which is likely to be completed within one and half years.

Under the first phase of the scheme, about 7,900 towers, also called infrastructure sites, are currently under installation in 500 districts in 27 states.

Out of these, the state-owned BSNL will install over 6,000 towers. The setting up and managing of these infrastructure services started in June 2007, with subsidy support from the department of telecommunication's 'universal service obligation fund'. The state-wise details of these towers under installation are:

Sl. No.	State	No. of Districts	No. of Towers
1	Andhra Pradesh	22	581
2	Arunachal Pradesh	12	62
3	Assam	20	90
4	Bihar	37	489
5	Chhattisgarh	16	560
6	Gujarat	4	66
7	Haryana	8	14
8	Himachal Pradesh	11	295
9	Jammu & Kashmir	12	178
10	Jharkhand	18	305
11	Karnataka	26	427
12	Kerala	11	46
13	Madhya Pradesh	45	985
14	Maharashtra	33	1017
15	Manipur	9	95
16	Meghalaya	7	102
17	Mizoram	8	71
18	Nagaland	7	56
19	Orissa	30	432
20	Punjab	3	13
21	Rajasthan	32	411
22	Sikkim	3	8
23	Tamil Nadu	27	371
24	Tripura	4	147
25	Uttar Pradesh	66	666
26	Uttranchal	13	217
27	West Bengal	16	167
	Total	500	7871*

(The number of towers is subject to change based on actual field survey and coverage achieved thereof as per the terms and conditions of the Agreements.)

So far around 1,100 towers have already come up, with mobile services from some of them having already commenced. Services from all the towers are expected to commence ina in a phased manner by the end of the current year, with the infrastructure being shared by three service mobile service providers. Number of towers commissioned by the successful bidders is given in table below

Sl. No.	Name of Bidder	No. of Towers	No. of Towers Commissioned
1	Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.	22	102
2	GTL Infrastructure Ltd.	12	371
3	Hutchison Essar Cellular Ltd.	20	242
4	Hutchison Essar South Ltd.	37
5	National Information Technologies Ltd. (Now KEC)	16	16
6	Quipo Telecom Infrastructure Ltd.	4	84
7	Reliance Communications Infrastructure Ltd.	8	245
		7871	1060