Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Wednesday, Dec 07, 2005
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Wednesday, Dec 07, 2005 |
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Rural Development Industry & Economy - Non-conventional Energy Info-Tech - Telecommunications Funds from USO for non-conventional energy — DoT to `power' rural expansion Thomas K Thomas
New Delhi , Dec. 6 NON-AVAILABILITY of power may not be a bottleneck for rolling out telecom services in rural areas, with the Department of Telecom mulling to fund usage of non-conventional energy from the Universal Services Obligation (USO) fund. Lack of adequate power supply has been one of the factors responsible for the slow growth of telecom services in rural areas. The Government is setting a target of covering all villages with a population of more than 100 by 2007 and providing mobile coverage of all block headquarters by June 2006. The target also includes mobile access to all villages with population of more than 5,000 by the end of 2006 and more than 2,000 by end of 2007. It is also being aimed to provide one phone per three households by 2007. On the broadband front, DoT is looking to provide access to all tehsil headquarters and gram panchayats by 2007. Rural tele-density is only 1.74 as against an urban tele-density of 26.2 as on March 2005. One of the problems being faced by companies such as State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd is erratic power supply in rural areas, which makes it an expensive proposition to operate telephone exchanges using diesel propelled generators. Power is also required for mobile service providers for running cell sites and recharging batteries. "Availability of power would play a crucial role in the success of cellular mobile telephony. The Government will encourage use of non-conventional energy sources to meet the power requirement of the telecom sector in rural areas and the expenses incurred on this account could be funded from the USO Fund," said a senior DoT official. They pointed out that Government-run organisations have already begun using non-conventional source of energy like solar energy to operate cell sites.
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