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G. Rambabu

Telecom companies preferred to pay penalties instead of rolling out services in the unremunerative areas as it would entail huge expenditures for them.

NEW DELHI, June 16

THE Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has set a deadline for the five private basic operators to fulfil their rural telephony obligations.

In a terse letter sent to all the operators - Reliance Telecom, Tata Teleservices, Bharti Telenet, HFCL Infotel and Shyam Telecom - the department has set June 30 for providing village public telephones (VPT) in 50 per cent of the uncovered villages in their service areas that they had committed in the first three years of their operations. All of them had started operation in 1997 and had committed to provide telephones in 97,806 villages across six circles (Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan) by 2000. To date they have managed to connect only 7,123 villages.

Despite repeated warnings that their licences could be terminated and extension of the earlier deadlines, the companies preferred to pay the penalties instead of rolling out services in the unremunerative areas as it would entail huge expenditures for them. In fact, to date they have paid Rs 53.75 crore in liquidated damages for non-commissioning of the promised services.

DoT has finally put its foot down and set a deadline for fulfilling at least half of their commitments by end-June and remaining half by December. Although this should read 48,9043 villages, the actual numbers are much lower as Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has already stepped in and provided connections in many of these villages. The DoT letter has provided a leeway to the operators by stating that "depopulated" villages, towns with less than 100 population, "naxalite-infested" areas and the places which can only be covered by satellite media are to be exempted from this deadline.

While the private operators are pleased with the concessions that have been granted, BSNL officials are not too happy. The whole burden of providing rural coverage that is being undertaken by BSNL will continue to remain so, they said. They pointed out that while it is justifiable to exclude villages with less than 100 population, and naxalite-affected, the villages that can only be covered by satellite should not have been excused. With no deadline for such villages they will continue to be neglected, as the private operators will not invest in setting up satellite telephone connections, they said.

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