Uso Fund Support For Broadband In Rural Areas

[abhay 0]

USO Fund support for broadband in rural areas

In a bid to boost broadband penetration in the country, the Department of Telecom has decided to extend support from the Universal Services Obligation (USO) Fund to operators offering broadband services in rural areas, reports Business Line. This is in addition to the earlier decision to support cellular telephone infrastructure in the villages through the USO Fund.

DoT has formed a high-powered committee to look into the modalities of amending the Indian Telegraph Act 1885 in order to accommodate monetary support for broadband services.

The government had earlier announced its decision to expand the scope of USO Fund to support cellular services.

The decision to include broadband services in the scope of USO Fund will benefit companies such as Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications Venture, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and also smaller operators such as Hathway and Dishnet. The move comes after suggestions made by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and demands made by the industry.

The growth of broadband in the country has been sluggish with just 1.5 million subscribers, which is far short of last year`s target of 3 million users by December 2005.

DoT has also sought to utilise the USO Fund, which was created in 2004, to finance fixed line telephone projects in villages.

All the telecom operators contribute 5% of their annual revenues towards the fund. At the end of 2005-06 the fund had Rs 72 billion lying unused.

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[@ksh@T 20]

bluddy **** where the broadband is neede no fund for that and for ppl who dont know the real use of bandwidth are given hell lotta bandwidth ..it happens only in INDIA