With a vision to connect the rural masses, the government will set up 10,000 telecom towers across the country this fiscal with financial support from the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund, a corpus for providing affordable telephone services in rural areas.
Addressing both the Houses of Parliament on the first day of the Budget session, President Pratibha Patil said, "The government has already initiated action to set up 10,000 towers in 2010-11 for connecting remote areas across the country."
Patil said the government is committed to the goal of extending the benefits of the modern communication facilities to rural areas.
She further added that financial support is provided from the USO Fund to provide infrastructure for rural connectivity.
The USO Fund was established in 2002 to provide telecommunication services to people in the rural and remote areas at affordable and reasonable prices.
Patil said against the target of 600 million telephone connections by 2012, the achievement already exceeds 570 million, with an unprecedented addition of nearly 20 million connections in December 2009 itself.
