The Hindu Business Line : ‘Use USO funds for rural mobile charging centres’

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‘Use USO funds for rural mobile charging centres’

TRAI wants SEBs to give power to base stations on priority basis.

Thomas K. Thomas

New Delhi, March 5 Recognising that lack of adequate power is stunting the growth of mobile services in rural areas, The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has suggested that money from the Universal Services Obligation fund should be utilised to set up mobile charging centres in villages.

In States such as West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the extent of mobile coverage is higher than the number of villages electrified. Though in other States, electric coverage is higher, the statistics is only on paper.

TRAI said that although 80 per cent of the villages have been electrified up to March 2008, in practice, the frequent and long interruptions in the electricity supply put a large number of the villages at par with the non-electrified ones.

Tapping solar power

TRAI has suggested that the USO fund, which has about Rs 20,000 crore lying unutilised, should work out the cost of providing mobile chargers which can work with solar power or little power supply in rural areas.

Accordingly, a fixed amount of subsidy may be extended to those service providers who have installed towers in rural areas, for installing such mobile chargers. “Considering the difficulties in the availability and reliability of electricity, even though the telecom infrastructure is developed, a need is felt to facilitate the charging of mobile handsets as this is the prime instrument for the mobile users.

The service providers who have reached by installing tower in the rural vicinity would be the right agency to facilitate the mobile charging facility,” the regulator said.

TRAI has also suggested the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, should be amended to involve State level agencies to enable growth of mobile services. “State electricity boards should provide power supply to rural base stations on priority basis. DoT shall issue a broad framework to help State governments to form State-specific telecom policy,” the regulator said.

Meanwhile equipment makers and technology companies are also working on bringing energy-efficient systems to rural India. Ericsson, for example, has started a pilot to run telecom towers on bio-gas. Other vendors such as Nokia have base stations that consumer less power.