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Villages May Get Net, Telephony On Cable

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I dont simply understand y r they forcing a product which that market doesn't require on a priority! They need, food and employment! Do that and then they'd have the purchasing power to get these products without the damn subsidies!!

Read the bold text below:: Does he mean that our ADC being paid was laid to waste by BSNL whose not been able to push it?? Wow!! :D

Villages may get Net, telephony on cable

Joji Thomas Philip | May 28, 2005 11:08 IST

Rediff.com

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is planning a convergence of voice data services.

It is expected to send a proposal to the government for allowing cable operators in rural areas to offer basic telephony and Internet services.

Trai is also to suggest a reduction in the licence fee and spectrum charges for rural cellular services. It is also proposed that Internet protocol-based telephony is permitted and the licensing structure amended, allowing broadband providers to offer voice services in rural India.

Trai chairman Pradip Baijal said a consultation paper on rural telephony was expected next month. The paper will recommend using cable operators as agents to connect rural households through telephones.

The paper is also expected to suggest amendments to licensing norms so that cable operators in villages can carry voice and data on their networks.

The government, which will issue the guidelines after studying Trai's proposals, will decide if cable operators can offer services outside the ambit of the unified licence.

As per the options being weighed by Trai, cable operators can have tie-ups with telephone service providers or set up their own infrastructure.

Cable operators can provide the "last-mile connectivity" through their networks, though the wire used by them will need to be changed to accommodate additional services.

At present, cable operators like Hathway provide television channels and Internet browsing facilities in bigger cities. Unified licence holders like Bharti and Reliance can offer Internet, phone and cable services.

While service providers have not offered these three services together to landline subscribers, the services come packaged on high-end mobile phones.

The department of telecommunications is simultaneously initiating amendments to the Telegraph Act to let cellular operators have access to the universal service obligation fund. At present, the USO fund is available only to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd for its fixed-line services in rural areas.

"The government has invested heavily in rural telephony and it subsidises the cost of the telephone instrument, but these have not produced the requisite results. We are working out models to force the rural market to proliferate," Baijal said.

Cable TV homes on the rise in heartland

Popular belief is that of the 45 million cable and satellite TV homes in the country, a vast majority is in urban areas.

But the National Sample Survey Organisation's latest findings show that 38 per cent of the 38.8 million cable and satellite TV homes in the country in 2002 were in villages. While cable penetration is high in rural areas, access to phones remains a problem.

According to NSSO numbers, only 1.7 per cent of rural households had a telephone connection in 2002, though over 10 per cent had a cable connection.

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yeah me 2 hav the same RAI. jahhan logon ko service chahiye wahaan dete nahin aur villagers who dont know how 2 use pc's are being offered broadband and all sorts of facilities which they dont demand off.........

akshat desijallad jain

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I would like to play devil's advocate on this issue:

while its true that BSP (bijli, sadak, pani) are the critical issues facing the country, we can't really cite lack of progress on the necessities front to avoid making progress on any other fronts.

by 'wiring' the villages, jobs are also generated which raises incomes and reduces the need for subsidies on food/water or power.

timely access to commodity info also results in better prices for farmers as an example of a data service.

when kiosks are set up in slums, it was found (much to everyone's surprise) that it only took a few hours for 'uneducated' street kids to teach themselves how to browse around the net and start getting relevant info.

these children had never seen a computer in their lives...

so its actually a good thing that pvt operators can access the USO funds to drive greater penetration in Bharat.

telecom could also provide a voice to the rural population and give them a broader platform to air grievances thus enabling more effective spending of the money allocated for their development.

'vox populi, vox dei' - the voice of the people is the voice of god.

Note that its not the infrastructure for the people!

:D

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I agree with city02.

Just I am not convinced about the economic viability of the cable-telephone option ... it'll surely need a set top box type of thing, which would cost around 1500-2000. If that's so, villagers can as well buy a mobile phone .... rentals are already rock bottom .... dirt cheap even for a huge majority of them. It's the handset-cost which is spoiling the party for mobiles in rural areas.

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Its not the handset cost thats the problem... Reliance already has mobiles in the 1000 to 2000 range and Tata Indicom is also having..

Its the lack of adequate mobile towers thats the problem..... Most of the mobile service providers do not think beyond the urban areas and hence do not have adequote coverage for the rural areas....

Reliance/TATA/BSNL/Airtel/Hutch/BPL/Idea all are guilty of this...

In Trivandrum I have seen places which are just 20 Km from the city but do not have coverage by Reliance/BSNL/BPL/Tata/Airtel/Idea!!!!

Just think what it may be for other rural areas.....

Earlier rural folks used to demand for new Telephone Exchanges in their areas in the era of FLPs...

Now they have started demanding for Mobile Towers!!!

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Well, reliance says 4 lac villages (out of total 6 lac villages in india) by dec. 2005 ..... and all urban agglomerations (5700) will be covered.

Very likely the 2 lac villages left by reliance, will also have been left by cable tv guys too. A cable tv guy won't invest in the systems need to receive satellite phone .. if he is to service only one or two houses !!! & doesn't make sense to put up a mobile tower if only 1 or 2 people buy a mobile connection.

In any case, cable tv is network is costlier anywhere (because it is a wired network) .... wireless system in local loop are WAY TOO CHEAP !!!

A CDMA tower covers an area of 110 sqkm (about 12kms diameter circle) .... If one starts laying cable 12 kms long, cris-crossing the circle ... then good idea to start importing cables from MARS. There's isn't sufficient cable produced on earth

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Earlier rural folks used to demand for new Telephone Exchanges in their areas in the era of FLPs...

Now they have started demanding for Mobile Towers!!!

except we can't have towers unless they are connected to a LEX (local exchange) nearby!

i think the max distance is about 5-10 km... (someone can pls verify)

the wireless part of mobile infrastructure is just the end points (devices to towers), the remaining (over 75%) is all wired.

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I am not sure of the 75% number you mention (don't know what is the basis).

But cost-wise it's the local loop which HELL costly in the telecom game.

Reliance will have about 10,000 towers ... BSNL has atmost 30,000 local exchanges.

No one really bothers about the cost of connecting 10,000 towers (which is equivalent of an exchange for mobile) ... or the cost to BSNL for connecting 30,000 exchanges WITH EACH OTHER.

It's the cost of laying a copper cable : right from the exchange to the customer premises (this is called the local loop) ... A COMPLETE LOOP FROM AN EXCHANGE TO EACH SUBSCRIBER (.... this no an electricity line, where-in you bring one cable from the first house and keep hopping on to the next, and onto the next .... It's a full loop from the exchange to the subscriber for each subscriber).

The wired local loop is believed to cost around 25,000 rupees on an average in India. If the local loop is replaced by a wireless loop .... the cost per head comes to around Rs. 5000/- (there is no cost in laying a cable from tower to subscribers .... but you would want to average out the cost of the mobile tower, over the no. of subscribers it can support).

Wireless-in-local-loop is a gamechanger for boosting teledensity. Even BSNL is going a major way in using WLL for it's basic services in a lot of places.

There is a natural constraint though ... Wireless local loop needs spectrum availability .... which is a natural constraint. There is no limit on the wires you can lay from exchange to subscriber .... but wireless local loop cannot be infinite

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There is no limit on the wires you can lay from exchange to subscriber .... but wireless local loop cannot be infinite

im surprised .... i would have thought the other way....

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There is no limit on the wires you can lay from exchange to subscriber .... but wireless local loop cannot be infinite

im surprised .... i would have thought the other way....

32945[/snapback]

redshift .. Hi ! .. so glad to see you among us, hale and hearty :)

The concept is like this: if you have Radio Mirchi running at 93.6 FM ... you can't have another radio station using the "same" frequency.

So probably, the second radio station could use the 95 FM frequency (95 FM, means 95 Megahertz or kilohertz, whatever ). You also need a buffer gap between 93.6 FM and 95 FM (because 95 FM would run in a band .... say 94.7 - 95.3 MHz) and you won't want interference in the signal.

A cellphone is exactly a two way radio !! --- just that inplace of a dedicated frequency allotted to each set ... a specific frequency may be alloted to each mobile dynamically. So that, if you are not speaking on your mobile, you don't need a frequency, but when you do, you are alloted a frequency.

NOW - THERE ARE LIMITED NO. OF FREQUENCIES AVAILABLE ... SAY 5 Mhz to 8 Mhz .... there is an upper limit on the no. of simultaneous people using these limited frequencies available. If cell companies sell more subscriptions than reasonable .... a lot of people will find all available frequencies busy and unable to talk.

... SO SO SO SO SO .... SPECTRUM IS A SCARE RESOURCE !!! -- but quite useful in providing low cost telecom connectivity.

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