Raja calls for push to rural tele-penetration

NEW DELHI,INDIA: Though Indian telecommunications sector is the third largest in the world and the second largest among the emerging economies of Asia, when it comes to rural teledensity, it is very low, pointed out Communications and IT Minister A Raja.

While inaugurating the 14th India Telecommunications International Summit in New Delhi today he said despite impressive growth of the telecom sector and low tariffs, vast stretches of India’s rural population have little or no telecom penetration and there is a large rural-urban divide in connectivity.

The government proposed to achieve rural teledensity of 25 per cent by means of 200 million rural connections by the end of the 11th Plan. So far, around 88 million phones have been provided in the rural areas with a teledensity of around 11per cent, said Raja.

While underlining that better telecom connectivity will help the rural hinterland to get integrated with the rapid growth processes, the Minister said efforts are being made under USO Fund to strengthen infrastructure for providing wireless phone services in rural and remote areas of the country.

The government envisages providing 600 million connections by the end of 2012, he said. This would necessitate an estimated requirement for equipment worth US$ 73 billion during the next five years and majority of it is expected to be realized through FDI, particularly in the area of mobile communication.

Today, all major global telecom majors like Vodafone, Nokia, Elcoteq, Alcatel, LG, and Ericsson have their manufacturing bases in India.

On the broadband front, the Minister pointed out that following the government’s measures to promote broadband in the country, the subscriber base has grown from 0.18 million in March 2005 to more than 4 million in August 2008.

The Internet and broadband subscriber base is expected to increase to 40 million and 20 million, respectively by 2010.

The Telecom summit is being attended by major players in Indian and global telecom industry, telecom operators and service providers.