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V. Rishi Kumar

If rural homes can share a common phone line, it's possible to ring in a revolution, says a pilot telecom project in Andhra Pradesh.

IT all started as a simple paper on rural telecommunications at the Stanford University in late 2000 and has since traversed a long, arduous path. A pilot telecom project has landed successfully in a remote backward village in Andhra Pradesh. The project builds on the modified party line concept wherein a few households share a common phone facility.

E. Madan Mohan Rao of Rural Telecom Foundation (RTF), a non-profit organisation, says this could be one way of addressing the poor telephone penetration across the rural tracts of the country.

The general principle is one of sharing a telephone line. If two people want to share a line, the minimal cost will be Rs 25 per month. Similarly, for three people it will be Rs 17 per month and Rs 12.50 for four. However, if 30 people share a line, it will be Rs .20 per person. This is possible as sharing a telephone is permitted by the existing norms and framework of the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.

The Rural Telecom Foundation, a non-government organisation founded by Joseph Perniyezi and Uday Kumar in the US, in association with the Centre for Environment Concerns and Thinksoft Consultants, has tried this technology and managed to break the minimum price barrier of Rs 50 per month, per telephone. It is now providing service in the name of Gram Phone at prices varying from Rs 12.50 a month to Rs 20 a month.

This research initiative, supported by a group of NRIs, will help move the telephone, considered a luxury to be enjoyed only by the richer sections in rural areas and that on a subsidised basis, into the domain of the poorest of the poor, Rao tells eWorld during a visit to Khalleda village in Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh.

For the price this service is offered in an environment that does not even think of having a phone facility, this project looks interesting. However, it is to be seen whether this can be replicated in other regions. There are advantages and disadvantages. The big advantage is that one will be able to have a phone in the house and receive calls, but a big drawback is that only one member of the group will be able to use the phone facility at a time. Users need to be educated on the principle of sharing such a facility.

Research by RTF has revealed that as late as the 1950s, 70 per cent of telephone users in the US used the facility on a share basis. With technology development and affordability, users gradually moved to a scenario where everyone could have his own facility. In the Indian context, given the financial constraints and the Government's efforts to boost telecom penetration, this is one technology that needs to be given serious consideration, says Rao.

The Gram Phone pilot project on the modified party line concept where two or more parties share a common line to a departmental exchange is backed by industry players and technical experts, including from Stanford, says Rao. The project demonstrates how technology can provide a real solution to last mile issues, helping India, in the process, to bridge the digital divide, he says.

Khalleda village in Andhra Pradesh has achieved over 85 per cent penetration with 286 out of 335 households, inhabited by the most backward sections of society, having a telephone connection. Following this experiment, the RTF plans to add 400 additional connections by October. Well, this is good going for a local pilot project, isn't it? But again, can this be replicated in other regions?

The RTF believes it is scalable and 15 million rural phones can be provided in less than six months. This is based on the assumption that there are at least 150 cable pairs available under each of the 25,000 C-DOT exchanges.

Change will not happen overnight but if users have a compelling reason to go in for a technology, one can perhaps hope that it's going to happen sooner than later.

vrishi@thehindu.co.in

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