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DoT working on broadband tender

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Khomba Singh New Delhi
With a view to meet the target of 9 million broadband subscribers by next year, the department of telecom (DoT) is working on a draft tender for equipment to provide broadband connectivity in rural India.
 
The tender will be in addition to the one already announced for mobile towers in rural areas that will be shared by telecom operators.
 
"The equipment for broadband will leverage the proposed mobile towers, and through this, we plan to connect all villages in the country. Initially, we will connect one lakh common service centres (CSC) in the villages," a DoT official said.
 
The official said the ministry was also looking at increasing the speed to at least 1 mbps, introducing new tariffs and increasing the size of downloads.
 
The ministry wants to take the number of broadband subscribers to 9 million in 2007 from the current 2 million. The broadband scheme will require installation of additional equipment in blocks in some of the proposed mobile towers. However, the size and the details of the scheme have not been decided, the official added.
 
A revenue of about Rs 5,000 crore will be used from the Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund for the mobile tower initiative.
 
The ministry has more than Rs 7,000 crore as the USO fund which is meant to be used for expanding rural telecom services. Once completed, about 85 per cent of the rural areas will have network coverage.
 
An inter-ministerial meeting has favoured an amendment in the Telegraph Act so that the USO fund can be utilised for the broadband initiative.

 
 

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First Published: Dec 09 2006 | 12:00 AM IST

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