India\’s connectivity plan to bridge digital divide

After seeing its telecom network, with nearly 600 million subscribers, become the second-largest globally, India is charting an ambitious scheme to connect its vast rural hinterland as it tries to reach phone and broadband services to each of its 626,000 villages spread across 28 states and union territories.

This is the ambitious programme outlined by Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot who sees communications access as not just bridging the digital divide between urban and rural India, but also becoming a great unifier.

\”We want to make our country much more wired than it is today. That\’s a very good way of getting people together. That\’s why we have to leverage these opportunities before us,\” Pilot said in an interaction with IANS.

\”Sometimes, we have differences created by political parties who keep hammering on the fault lines in our society based on ethnicity, language, culture. This will disappear once people \’meet\’ each other through the internet, learn from each other.\”

Towards this plan, the government proposes to install over 11,000 communications towers across the country, several in border villages, using the services of the state-run telecom provider Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL).

\”We are close to launching this programme of putting up these towers in villages where the population is less than 500 people and sometimes less than 200,\” said the minister, adding that the money would come from a dedicated fund worth close to $3.5 billion.

Many of the towers would be in the tribal belts of Nagaland, Tripura, Mizoram and Assam in the northeast, as the government\’s priority, as opposed to that of private players, is to get its villages, too, in the telecom loop, he added.

Besides the four states mentioned above, India\’s northeastern region also covers Meghalaya, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim.

\”Private operators go where the money is,\” said the minister, adding the finances will come from the Universal Service Obligation Fund collected by the government from private players to meet the demands of rural connectivity.

To implement the project, the government has granted subsidy to the state-owned company of Rs.4,500 ($100) per broadband connection that will be rolled out through the company\’s 27,789 rural and remote telephone exchanges.

A customer can avail the service by paying Rs.2,250 ($50) followed by Rs.300 per month for the computing device and subsidised broadband package at Rs.99-Rs.150 ($2.2-$3.3) per month.

BSNL has also tied up with software solutions provider HCL Infosystems to work together on the National Broadband Penetration Programme. Accordingly, personal computers will be available at HCL\’s outlets across more than 4,000 towns.

Pilot, who joined politics after a two-year stint with auto major General Motors in the US, says the current internet penetration in India of just seven percent could go up to 30-40 percent through wireless broadband route in a few years.

\”Internet connectivity will help students studying in remote areas get access to the best of educational resources,\” said the minister, barely 32 years old but already a two-term member of parliament and amongst the country\’s youngest ministers.

He also wants to make the northeast region a hub for information technology.

\”I believe that the northeast can become a big centre for attracting investments from the private sector-in business process outsourcing, knowledge process outsourcing,\” said Pilot, who is an alumnus of the Wharton Business School.

\”Young people there have a lot of talent and are easier to train and impart skills to for this kind of work. If we can have rural hubs for business process outsourcing, then I am sure we can have such centres in the northeast as well.\”

Pilot said the government is also planning to give satellite phone services to those villages in the northeast, which are cut off from others due to their location and topography. The tariff will be largely subsidised.

\”There are some places, say like in Arunachal Pradesh that are 14,000 feet high-no spectrum, no mobile phones. So in addition to paramilitary forces, we are trying to give satellite phones in these villages and reduce the call charges,\” he said.

\”I want tall the states of the northeast to feel as involved in what\’s happening in New Delhi and Mumbai in terms of new innovative ideas.\”

Pilot is also overseeing what is called \”Project Arrow\” of India Post, a state-run department that offers postal services, to give a corporate look to 727 post offices in the country with better services under one roof.

\”The look and feel of these offices will be different,\” he said, adding these post offices will be fully computerised with additional features like electronic funds transfer, instant money order and computerised banking services.

\”We picked 1,000 post offices in 500 districts last year. The look, feel and the aesthetics of these offices have all changed, so have the uniforms of the staff. These are like one-stop shop for people looking at a host of

services,\” he said.

\”Once the atmosphere is more welcoming, footfalls will increase. And once the footfalls increase, more revenue will come in. And once more revenue comes in, it motivates our employees,\” he added.

\”We have started getting results too. In the last quarter of 2009, these post offices saw a 23-percent jump in revenues,\” said the minister, passionate about promoting a culture of service with convenience and a smile in India Post.

The government has around 150,000 post offices across the country and more than 450,000 people working out of them. The idea is to make these offices find ways to counter the loss of revenues on account of telecom, internet and couriers.

\”Our job is not to make a profit but deliver services to people. Fortunately, we still enjoy a lot of goodwill. We now send our people for training and give them incentives. We want them to be as self-sustaining as possible.\”

FACT SHEET ON INDIA\’S TELECOM AND BROADBAND BASE

(as on Jan 31, 2010)

* Total telephone subscriber base: 581.81 Million

* Wireless phone subscriptions: 545.05 Million

* Fixed line subscriptions: 36.76 Million

* Net wireless subscriptions added during January: 19.9 million

* Overall Tele-density: 49.50 percent

* Broadband subscription base: 8.03 million

Source: Telecom Regulatory Authority of India