LS passes bill to augment tele-density in rural areas

New Delhi, Dec 8 (UNI) The Lok Sabha today passed a legislation seeking to amend the Indian Telegraph Act to increase the tele-density in rural and inaccessible areas of the country through mobile phones, a cheaper alternative to landline connections.

The bill, introduced by Communication Minister Dayanidhi Maran, was supported by both the Treasury and Opposition benches who were unanimous in their demand that steps should be taken to increase telecom penetration in rural areas.

Winding up the two-hour-long discussion on the Indian Telegraph (Amendment) Bill, 2006, Mr Maran said more than 36,000 villages in the country have been covered under mobile telephones so far, while the remaining villages will be covered by next year.

Mr Maran said there was unprecedented growth in the telecom sector. The mobile phone base had been increasing with an addition of five million subscribers every year.

He said the urban tele-density had gone up to 44.5 from 8.2, while the growth was still less in rural areas where it had gone up to 1.86 from .7.

He said the Indian Telegraph Act provides for the establishment of a fund called the ''Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund'' for meeting the ''Universal Service Obligation'' (the obligation to provide access to basic telegraph services to people in the rural and remote areas at affordable and reasonable prices).

At present, support from USO Fund was being provided only for the basic telegraph services such as wire-line and fixed wireless terminals.

In order to make the support of the USO Fund available to cellular services in rural areas, the bill seeks to make necessary amendment in clause IA of Section 3 of the Indian Telegraph Act.

Mr Maran said the National Telecom Policy, 1999, had set the target of achieving rural tele-density from the level of 0.4 in 2002 to 4.0 by the year 2010. The rural tele-density had increased to 1.77 by 2005. In order to facilitate telecom penetration in the rural areas, it was considered desirable to support new wireless technologies which could be rolled out much faster.

Therefore, he said, cellular mobile service was to be deployed for rapid expansion of telegraph services in rural and remote areas at affordable and reasonable prices.

Accordingly, the financial support from USO Fund was required to be provided for cellular services in such areas.

Though the bill was supported by all the members cutting across party lines, a section of the members, especially those from the Left parties, questioned the government action in promulgating an ordinance earlier.

CPI member Prabodh Panda moved a statutory resolution against the introduction of the bill. However, he later withdrew the resolution.

Marxist member Varkala Radhakrishnan said there was no emergency situation for the government to promulgate an ordinance, instead of introducing the bill straightaway. ''The government should resort to emergency route like ordinance only when there is an extremely emergent need for the same,'' he said.

UNI SH/YS PK KP1615