Mobile connectivity in border regions soon

The Department of Telecom (DoT) has chalked out plans to speed up USOfunded mobile connectivity projects in the north-eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Meghalaya, Jammu and Kashmir, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and other border areas on a priority basis, the DoT’s internal action plan report states.

The key projects to watch out for would be mobile connectivity in Arunachal Pradesh and parts of Assam, pending for the last five years.

All these projects run by the Government of India are funded by the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund (USOF), a corpus with accumulated cess from the telcos, which is currently a INR 50,000 crore fund.

“The proposal under submission is for resolving issues pertaining to the BSNL tender for implementation of mobile services in Arunachal Pradesh and two districts of Assam, as the projects are stalled after the issuance of APO (Advance Purchase Order) due to a Special Leave Petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court and other issues,” said an internal note of the DoT.

Ninong Ering, Congress’ Lok Sabha MP from Arunachal East, had also raised the issue of old technology. The USO Fund too refused to fund the project, saying 2G technology was old and obsolete. But looking at the difficult terrain in the northeastern states, 2G-based mobile service is said to be suitable for the uncovered regions there in the absence of broadband backhaul where advanced technology may be found to be underutilised. The Northeast project was approved in 2014, but it has still not seen the light of day as the SLP and bureaucratic delays have stalled it.

The DoT note also states that part of the immediate agenda is “approval of the Digital Communication Commission (DCC) for provision of mobile services in uncovered villages and National Highways of Meghalaya and Leftwing Extremist (LWE) areas Phase II as per cabinet approval and floating of request for proposal (RFP), and capacity augmentation in Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep.”

The DoT’s immediate action plan also includes finalisation of a list of uncovered villages in 115 “aspirational districts” and the preparation of the DCC note.

Meanwhile, state-run telecom major BSNL has partnered with Google to increase access to its WiFi footprint in the country. With the launch of this service, people across the country will be able to enjoy BSNL’s free WiFi services.

This initiative will allow customers use BSNL’s high speed internet services on WiFi. BSNL is also taking steps to increase the rural WiFi footprint, promoting the government’s ‘Digital India’ initiative.

“We have been partnering with various technology companies upgrading our platform and increasing our customer reach in this era of ever-increasing demand of high speed internet”, BSNL Director (CFA) Vivek Bansal said.

There are 38,000 BSNL WiFi hotspot locations operational in India. One can access these by buying WiFi vouchers that are priced starting at just INR 19.