On an average, only three calls are made in a week from a typical village PCO, though it costs only 60 paise. The same call costs Re 1.20 in cities. Compare this with the capital cost _ Rs 50,000 per telephone connection in rural areas and Rs 80,000 for providing a village public telephone.
This makes it highly unprofitable for private basic telecom service providers to venture into the rural areas, the mandatory stipulations imposed by the VPT Agreement, notwithstanding. According to the pact, the private sector should implement 10 per cent of their connectivity to villages under the agreement.
But the need for linking rural India with communications facilities cannot be undermined. It could lead to a digital divide between the urban and rural areas. However, the Internet and facilities like call collect can make VPTs profitable, benefiting both the rural buyer and the telecom operators.
In a paper, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry's Taskforce Report on Telecommunications and IT has suggested that the village telecom market can be enlarged and made profitable by converging the VPT networks and services with Internet technologies. This would turn the VPTs into Village Communication Centres. The farmers should be able to get information about the going rates of their produce on the Internet at these centres, the report says .
Since most rural users have low paying capacity, facilities like "call collect" can be used in rural areas to encourage telecom traffic. Through this facility, villagers can talk to their relatives or clients in towns and cities. The call charges will be paid by the person they call up.
Moreover, Ficci says a ten-year income tax holiday for investments in rural areas and free import of technology, meant for rural areas, will give a boost to this segment.
The report seeks freedom to service providers to give a mix of services even at concessional rates to private operators to make the investments in rural areas profitable.
The government to draw a technology roadmap in order to get the most cost-effective solutions, the report says adding that the technology should be of international standards. It took the government three to four years to realise that the MARR technology was faulty and almost a third of such telephones are perpetually out of order, says a Ficci official.
