Rural Teledensity

Revenue from wireless data usage in the country increased by about 22 per cent to Rs 1.74 lakh crore in the financial year 2022-23, a report by telecom regulator Trai said on Tuesday. According to the report, the revenue from wireless data services was Rs 1.43 lakh crore in the financial year 2021-22. "Total revenue from wireless data usage increased from Rs 1,43,169 crore in the year 2021-22 to Rs 1,74,144 crore in the year 2022-23 with yearly rate of growth of 21.63 per cent," Trai's Yearly Telecom Services Performance Indicator Report for the year 2022-23 said. The increase in wireless data revenue usage was mainly on account of growth in user base as telecom operators are yet to monetise 5G data services that were launched in October 2022. The gross revenue of telecom service providers increased by 19.94 per cent to over Rs 3.33 lakh crore in FY'23 from Rs 2.78 lakh crore in FY'22. However, the adjusted gross revenue (AGR), based on which the government calculates its levies,

Completion rate is less than a third, and at current pace it would take another two years to cover all gram panchayats in the country.

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The updated National Telecom Policy (NTP), currently being finalised, is expected to give attention on the digital divide between rural and urban areas.In the earlier NTP, issued in 2012, the target was to increase rural teledensity to 70 per cent by 2017 and to 100 per cent by 2020. Despite all the effort and growth of wireless broadband, the figure was only 56.7 per cent at the end of December 2017.Similarly, broadband connectivity to villages has been lagging, with delay in laying of an optical fibre network (OFN) up to gram panchayats. In NTP 2012, an aim was reliable and affordable broadband access to rural and remote areas, via a combination of optical fibre, wireless, VSAT and other technologies. All panchayats were get an OFN, with funding from the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).This latter aim has seen several missed deadlines. A national network (NOFN) was to connect all 250,000 gram panchayats by 2016. The latest date for completion is March 2019. The delay has ...