Updated : Bsnl To Provide Zero-rent Telephones For Rural Areas !

[Himanshu Singh 19]

Financial Express reports:

In a bid to tap the rural market, state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd on Wednesday said it would provide rent-free basic telephones to customers in villages.

This scheme would commence from August 1 and would be made applicable only for those rural telephone exchanges that have the capacity of 1,000 phone lines, BSNL General Manager Hari Shankar Sharma said in Kota.

For STD facility, the consumer would have to deposit Rs 500 as security money, which would be refunded when the consumer disconnects from the facility.

[Honest 836]

DoT to dial 50k villages

27 Aug, 2008, 0030 hrs IST, ET

NEW DELHI: The department of telecom (DoT) is set to sign an agreement with state-owned BSNL for providing telephones to the newly-identified 50,000 villages according to census 2001.

These include villages with population below 100 and those that were left out earlier due to various reasons. With this, the DoT is of the view that it will realise its target of providing village telephony to remote villages under the Bharat Nirman programme.

Additionally, the DoT will soon launch another scheme to provide public telephone facility to the remaining villages in an attempt to provide public telephones to all villages in India. To promote last mile connectivity, the center will also provide subsidised public telephone facilities to 66,822 uncovered villages of which 54,700 have already been covered.

Besides, BSNL will extend its broadband facilities as many as 30,500 villages. The installation work of public telephones in all villages is expected to complete by the end of the next year. BSNL was awarded the work for providing Village Public Telephones (VPTs) in all the remaining 66,822 uncovered villages in 2006 with support from Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF). All telcos pay a part of their revenues towards the USOF.

This fund, which was set up to pay for the installation of basic fixed-line telephones in villages, has been amended to fund installation of wireless telephones too.

So far, the villages with population below 100, villages lying in deep forests and areas affected with insurgency were excluded from the ambit of state sponsored public telephones. About 5,000 remote villages are being provided with VPT facilities using satellite technology as they cannot be reached by fibre.

[Sadikk 301]

Good move.

[HetalDP 947]

BSNL earns by the Subscriber of Urban and Commercial Things ans still they Bleed for Rurals

All BSNL Broadband and Telephone Rental is unfavorable to Urban users

one Day All Urban user will shift to Private Player and BSNL is will thrown away as rural only company.

Just Compare Commercial Broadband Plan with TATA and Reliance you will know.

[Honest 836]

BSNL to procure 93 million GSM lines to serve rural population

10 Sep, 2008, 1816 hrs IST, PTI

NEW DELHI: State-owned telecom operator BSNL will procure 93 million lines to extend coverage of GSM mobile services to all the villages having population more than 1,000 persons.

Through this expansion, BSNL will also introduce value added services like mobile TV, mobile broadband, MMS, location based services etc. This was announced by Communications and IT Minister Thiru A Raja while addressing the Members of the Consultative Committee of Parliament attached to his Ministry in New Delhi on Wednesday.

The Minister informed that value added services like mobile banking, mobile advertisement, tele-education and lost mobile tracking system are also planned to be launched by BSNL during the current year. BSNL is going to provide wireless broadband services Wi-Max through the franchisee route.

Raja informed the Committee that BSNLs mobile network is being upgraded to 3G level, for which order and equipment are likely to be progressively commissioned by July 2009. BSNL has planned to provide high-speed data service (up to 2.4 Mbps) on CDMA WLL network. It has also planned to commercially launch prepaid services on WLL from this month.

The Minister said that 8,000 mobile towers would be erected by the end of this year under Phase-I of the shared mobile infrastructure scheme. Another 11,000 towers are planned under Phase-II of this scheme.

Government will initially connect 5,000 blocks in the country by wireless broadband soon after the allocation of the spectrum. The UPA government has set a target of 500 million telephone connections by 2010 and 750 million connections by 2012, Raja said.

[Honest 836]

Six telecom vendors bid for BSNL GSM lines contract

10 Sep, 2008, 1752 hrs IST, PTI

NEW DELHI: As many as six telecom vendors, including Nokia-Siemens Network, have bid for the BSNL's 93 million GSM lines contract, a top official of the state-run company said here on Wednesday.

"Six telecom vendors Nokia-Siemens Network, Ericsson, Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel and ZTE have bid for state-run BSNL 93 million GSM lines contract," BSNL Chairman Kuldeep Goyal said.

Surprisingly, Motorola has not bid for the contract.

[Honest 836]

19,000 mobile towers soon to connect all villages

10 Sep, 2008, 2139 hrs IST, PTI

NEW DELHI: India's state-run telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) will erect 19,000 towers in two phases to extend mobile phone connectivity to all villages in the country, the government said on Wednesday.

"Some 8,000 mobile towers will be erected by the end of this year under Phase-I of the shared mobile infrastructure scheme," India's Telecommunications Minister A. Raja told a parliamentary committee here Wednesday.

Another 11,000 towers will be erected in the second phase, he said while addressing members of the Consultative Committee of Parliament attached to his ministry.

BSNL will also procure 93 million GSM lines so that people in all villages in the country having a population of more than 1,000 can avail of mobile phone services, he said.

GSM stands for Global System for Mobile communications and is the world's most widely used mobile phone technology.

"The government is giving the highest priority to extending telecom facilities to rural and remote areas of the country," he said.

To provide broadband connectivity, the government will initially connect 5,000 blocks, the smallest administrative unit in India, by wireless broadband, he said.

Villages coming within a radius of 10 km of a block headquarter will be covered by such connectivity.

This will benefit schools, public health centres, village administrative bodies (panchayats) and the community service centres (CSCs) meant to provide e-governance and data services to rural areas.

This will be done soon after new spectrum is allocated to the various telecom operators. This activity will be funded with the support of the universal service obligation (USO) fund, he said.

The USO fund is created from a 5 percent universal service obligation levy that the government charges all telecom operators in India.

The fund is meant to support extension of connectivity to areas where private operators do not enter for lack of adequate profitability.

To ensure widespread rural connectivity the ruling United Progressive Alliance coalition government has kept a target of 500 million telephone connections by 2010 and 750 million connections by 2012, Raja said.

He hoped that this target would be surpassed.

He said to promote expansion of rural wire line and wire line based broadband services, the government has recently decided to waive off the license fees for rural wire line.

The government has also decided to give USO fund support to BSNL and reduce USO levy from 5 percent to 3 percent for covering more than 95 percent of the development blocks, he said.

This was in accordance with a recommendation of India's telecom regulatory body Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), he said.

The Minister also said that BSNL will launch during the current year value added services like mobile banking, mobile advertisement, tele-education and lost mobile tracking systems.

BSNL will also provide wireless broadband services and upgrade its mobile network to third generation (3G) levels. It will also provide high-speed data services.

[Greatest 55]

whatever bsnl does for the nation, it will still be regarded as 'govt company, cannot trust', by the people...

I am not able to understand, when bsnl is doing so much investments, their calls keep dropping, or there is some connectivity issue even when the signal bars are full, etc.... it is happenening here in gujarat, but dont know about other places...!!

[HetalDP 947]

whatever bsnl does for the nation, it will still be regarded as 'govt company, cannot trust', by the people...

I am not able to understand, when bsnl is doing so much investments, their calls keep dropping, or there is some connectivity issue even when the signal bars are full, etc.... it is happenening here in gujarat, but dont know about other places...!!

Everywhere is the same Story Babu log get Kickback in Big Tenders so the the Quality will be always poor.

[Honest 836]

Every village to have public telephone service by 2009-end

13 Sep, 2008, 0036 hrs IST, PTI

NEW DELHI: Every village in India is expected to have public telephone service by 2009-end, as state-owned BSNL has started installing public telephones in the remaining 50,000 villages following a go-ahead from DoT.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) has started work on the second phase of the village public telephone scheme, which includes those villages that appeared in Census 2001 and were left out earlier, an official statement said here on Friday.

The village public telephone scheme will be provided subsidy support from the Department of Telecom's Universal Service Obligation Fund. Installation of public telephones in all villages is expected to be completed by the end of the next year, it said.

The government is implementing a scheme to provide subsidised public telephone facility to 66,822 villages under the Bharat Nirman programme. Out of these, 54,700 villages have already been covered and work in the remaining villages would be completed this year.

All villages have been brought under the scheme except those having population of less than 100, those lying in deep forests and those affected with insurgency. About 5,000 remote villages are being provided with the telephone service using satellite technology.

BSNL has already provided telephones to 5,50,000 villages across the country. It has extended 11 million GSM connections in the rural areas. Its GSM coverage has reached out to about 2,56,000 villages.

That apart, the company covers 75 per cent of the villages through its WLL network. The telecom giant has been providing the high-speed broadband services in 30,500 villages.