45 per cent villages provided with phones

New Delhi, Sep 19: More than thirty thousand villages have been provided with Village Public Telephones (VPTs) under the Rural Telephony component of Bharat Nirman Programme and another 14,183 villages will be connected with satellite phones soon.

As against the target of providing VPTs in 66,822 uncovered villages under the programme, 30,251 villages have been provided VPTs as on August 31, 2006.

In the states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Assam, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh more than 50 per cent of the targeted villages have been provided with VPTs, the Communications and IT Ministry said.

Under the programme, the 14,183 remotely located villages have been planned to be connected through Digital Satellite Phone Terminals (DSPTs).

In states like Orissa and Jharkhand, 100 per cent uncovered villages are envisaged to be provided with DSPTs. The steps are being taken to deploy satellite based equipment to provide VPTs in the remotely located villages.

For expeditious roll out in some of these villages, existing wireless technology WLL, Wireless in Local Loop, is also being deployed.

It may be recalled that under the Bharat Nirman Programme, 66,822 revenue villages in the country, which have not yet been provided with a Village Public Telephone (VPT), will be covered by November, 2007.

An estimated sum of Rs 451 crore would be incurred to provide subsidy support for these VPTs. The entire funding shall be met out of the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund.

UNI