However cost effective the technologies may be, access to telecom facilities for the rural populace actually depends on the economics for the private service providers. Though the current licensing policy has provisions to levy penalties if private operators do not roll out 10 per cent of their network in rural areas, circumventing the restriction is no big deal.
"Basic telephone service providers in Jaipur, Bhopal and Indore fulfilled their licensing requirement of rural network by just technically covering the area on the city outskirts from where villagers can access telephone services at high cost," remarked Anjali Nigam, lecturer, MS University, Vadodara.
According to her, in a market-driven economy, pure regulatory measures to push investors to rural areas will not get the desired result. "There has to be a pull policy rather a push policy," she argued. The pull policy which she advocates, calls for rewarding the service providers based on various service quality parameters such as call completion rate, customer satisfaction level, teledensity and remoteness of an area.
"Based on the points earned, the revenue sharing ratio of an operator can be increased at a predetermined rate so that a private service provider reaches the break even point fast," she said.
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