dahiyars
December 13th, 2004, 09:47 PM
Reliance Infocomm: Robbing The Poor To Pay The Rich
THE Consultation Paper by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on rural telecom services has brought out clearly that the rural telecom penetration is slowing down and the gap between rural and urban Teledensity is widening very fast. The entire raison d’etre of introducing competition in basic services in 1994 was bringing additional resources into expanding the network to connect all the villages and provide phone on demand by 1997. Even after nearly 10 years, the number of villages without telephones is more than 85,000 and the waiting list in the semi urban areas is more than 4 million. Even worse, the rural urban ratio is of the order of 1:11 today from the earlier one of 1:3. Obviously, the opening up of the basic services, instead of adding to resources for rural telephony, has concentrated resources on the more well-off consumers and urban areas. This is exactly what we had predicted when basic services were being opened to competition, which has now been corroborated also by TRAI, “The prime reason for slow-down is apparently the increased focus on cellular mobile infrastructure deployment after 2001-02 and reduction in fixed line and rural investments.”
Dr. R.S.Dahiya
THE Consultation Paper by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on rural telecom services has brought out clearly that the rural telecom penetration is slowing down and the gap between rural and urban Teledensity is widening very fast. The entire raison d’etre of introducing competition in basic services in 1994 was bringing additional resources into expanding the network to connect all the villages and provide phone on demand by 1997. Even after nearly 10 years, the number of villages without telephones is more than 85,000 and the waiting list in the semi urban areas is more than 4 million. Even worse, the rural urban ratio is of the order of 1:11 today from the earlier one of 1:3. Obviously, the opening up of the basic services, instead of adding to resources for rural telephony, has concentrated resources on the more well-off consumers and urban areas. This is exactly what we had predicted when basic services were being opened to competition, which has now been corroborated also by TRAI, “The prime reason for slow-down is apparently the increased focus on cellular mobile infrastructure deployment after 2001-02 and reduction in fixed line and rural investments.”
Dr. R.S.Dahiya