Reliance Info, Bsnl Bag Universal Service Orders

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http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/857659.cms

NEW DELHI: Universal service obligation fund has become functional. Bharat Sanchar Nigam, India’s largest telecom operator, and Reliance Infocomm, India’s largest private telecom operator, have bagged orders to provide telephones in rural areas under USO fund’s first tender.

They will provide telephone connections to 48,310 villages across 300 distrcts. These villages do not have any phone connections.

According to sources, BSNL has won orders for providing telephones in 66% of rural areas under the universal obligation fund, while Reliance has bagged the rest 33% of the tender quantity. Of a total 300 Secondary Switching Areas (SSA), BSNL bagged contract for 184 SSAs while Reliance won in 97 SSAs.

Boundaries of one SSA roughly coincides with the boundaries of a district. BSNL officials said the competitive bidding brought down the cost of the project by about 17% from the reserve price.

The USO Fund Administration would cover all the 5.7 lakh villages with public phones. It has already signed agreements for disbursal of subsidy from the fund to more than 5.2 lakh village public telephones. Bids for the remaining 57,000 such villages have also been invited and the agreements are likely to be signed by November this year.

Agreements have also been signed for replacement of more than 1,80,000 village public telephones on outdated Multi Access Radio Relay technology.

The department of telecom (DoT) would also soon invite bids for setting up Tele-Information Centre providing access for both voice and data in villages with a population of more than 2,000. About Rs 600 crore has been disbursed as subsidy so far to the Universal Service Providers.

The disbursements during the current fiscal are estimated to be around Rs 2,700 crore. BSNL is expected to get a major chunk of this fund.