Guwahati: Telecom minister Manoj Sinha on Tuesday said the
centre is initiating projects worth Rs10,700 crore for improving
telephone connectivity in north-east (NE) by December this year.
“Telecom
connectivity is a big problem in north-east. The central government had
identified various solutions, but due to various reasons these could
not be completed.
Now, the department of telecom (DoT) has initiated
projects worth Rs10,700 crore to complete these by December 2018,” Sinha
said at a press conference.
This amount, which is about 1/8th of
the total investment planned by the DoT, is likely to be enhanced to
Rs15,000 crore for north-east, the minister said. “As part of the
initiatives, we are rolling out a comprehensive telecom development
project at an estimated cost of Rs5,336.31 crore,” he said.
“In
8,621 villages and along the national highway in the north-east, 6,673
mobile towers will be set up to provide connectivity and an MoU was
signed between BSNL and USO Fund for this purpose,” Sinha said. Out of
these, 2,817 mobile towers will be set up by BSNL in Arunachal Pradesh
and two districts of Assam, while the work of erecting 2,004 towers in
six states has been initiated by Bharti Airtel in December 2017 and will
be completed in 18 months, he added.
Attending a two-day
conference on implementation of BharatNet and other major projects in
north-east, the telecom minister dedicated the Asthamangal Project by
BSNL to the nation, especially to the citizens of the region.
Under
this project, alternate bandwidth of 810 gbps at a cost of about Rs35
crore has been provided by BSNL using connectivity through optical power
ground wire (OPGW) of Power Grid Corporation of India (PGCIL) for all
state headquarters and other important locations of NE region.
“In
conference with all the stakeholders, we have reached an understanding
that Centre and states have to solve the problems jointly to expedite
development in this region. Most of the projects we have planned, will
be completed by the end of this year,” the minister said.
He
informed that the progress of the BharatNet project has been slow in the
NE region due to capacity of agencies implementing the project, various
developmental activities like expansion of national highways by
National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), hilly terrain, remote and
inaccessible areas, and law and order related issues.
“In the
eight states of north-east, there are 12,017 gram panchayats, out of
these 7,338 were taken up in phase-I under BharatNet for connecting with
high speed optical fibre network. But only 2,240 gram panchayats that
are service ready,” Sinha said.
The minister informed that 92,000
gram panchayats were connected in the last 18 months across the country
in the first phase. “In the second phase, 1,50,000 gram panchayats will
be connected by March 2019. The target is tough, but we are hopeful of
achieving it by December 2018,” he added.
Due to various
issues in connecting some remote villages by fibre network, 4,240 gram
panchayats in the north-east are to be connected by broadband by
satellite by December 2018 and the estimated cost of this will be Rs733
crore, Sinha said.