Mobile services to come under USO fund

The government has decided to issue an ordinance to amend the Indian Telegraph Act and bring mobile telephone services in rural areas under the Universal Services Obligation (USO) Fund.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the Union Cabinet today, Information and Broadcasting Minister PR Dasmunsi said.

The Cabinet will shortly send the Indian Telegraph (Amendment) Ordinance, 2006, for the President's assent.

"Earlier, the USO fund was spent on wireline services alone. It is good that it will be extended to wireless services. Mobile operators can share the infrastructure to roll out their services," Association of Unified Acces Service Providers (AUSPI) Secretary- General SC Khanna said.

Telecom operators pay around 5 per cent of their revenue towards the fund, which was set up in 2002 and has around Rs 7,000 crore corpus at present.

The standing committee on information technology had recently opposed the amendment for deleting the word "basic" from the Act.

The committee said the DoT's plea that the inclusion of the word "basic" had led to a situation in which it could not provide subsidy for cellular services would give an impression that the government was trying to "water down the responsibilities or promote a certain type of service."