Telecom services reach over 66,000 villages

In order to boost rural telecom, the village public telephones (VPTs) scheme has been extended to 66,822 villages under Bharat Nirman through subsidy support from universal service obligation fund (USOF).

Statting this in a written reply in Parliament, minister of communications and information technology A Raja said 7871 sharable infrastructure sites had been set up in 500 districts for providing mobile services in rural and remote areas through subsidy support from USOF (Phase-I).

He said that in the second phase of the mobile infrastructure scheme for setting up 11,049 additional towers to cover the remaining uncovered rural and remote areas of the country was likely to be launched shortly.

For creating general infrastructure for development of telephone facilities, the government has proposed improving the optical fibre cable network between the block headquarters and district headquarters, the minister disclosed.

He further said Rs1450 crore is likely to be spent during the current financial year as subsidy support through universal service obligation fund for rural director exchange lines (RDEL).

So far 21 private sector companies have come forward for making investment in rural and remote areas, particularly in the mobile sector under universal service obligation fund scheme of shared infrastructure:

Infrastructure providers who have signed agreements

Universal service providers who have signed agreements for providing mobile services