DoT plans to extend mobile coverge to 200,000 villages
27 Aug 2008
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 |