Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad says over 55669 villages in India still don’t have access to mobile telephony services. The end of September saw rural and urban teledensity standing at 48.79% and 152.36%, respectively.
Prasad claims that out of a total of 597608 villages, nearly 541939 were able to use mobile telephony services. This leaves roughly 55669 regions or 9.31% of the whole without coverage. Addressing the Lok Sabha, he said the government’s aim was to guarantee connectivity everywhere. However, demand for it is very price sensitive.
As a result, the level of concentration for telecom services is entirely dependent on the purchasing power of the customers. Prasad asserts the huge gap between rural and urban teledensity is because of the disparity between the incomes of each. The Minister further stated that rural connectivity has been gathering momentum recently.
As per the National Telecom Policy, the government aims to raise village teledensity to 70% by 2017. The figure is supposed to increase to 100% by 2020. PTI reports the government has undertaken various measures to improve offerings. For instance, Prasad claims it is in the process of setting up approximately 2199 mobile towers in Left Wing Extremism (LWE) affected states.
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The entire procedure is costing the administration over Rs 3567.58 crore. The Telecom Minister went on to say that private telecom operators had installed 29000 mobile towers after he had warned the companies of a severe backlash if it didn’t take steps to resolve the problem of call drops in India.
Out of the 29000 new sites, 2200 were built in Delhi. MTNL set up 28 towers in the city, while BSNL installed 4500 across the nation. The DoT and TRAI are currently working together to monitor the situation.