Jharkhand rural telephony misses ‘tone’

The ambitious plan of Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to set up a mobile network in rural Jharkhand is gathering dust owing to the apathy of executing agencies.

As part of the national initiative, the DoT had offered work for erection of 305 mobile towers to two infrastructure providers (IPs), Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) and the Reliance Telecom Infrastructure (RTIL), through a countrywide tender in 2006.

The agreement conditions the IPs had signed with the DoT in May 2006 stipulate that half of the towers should be handed over to DoT within eight months and the rest in the next four months.

But the two IPs did show much interest in the project as it is recognised as ‘financially unviable’ by the operators.

This despite DoT granting up to Rs 7.96 lakh under the Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund for each mobile tower coming up in rural areas of 18 districts of the state.

Two years have elapsed since the agreement was signed, none of the IPs has handed over any single installation to the DoT for inspection.

BSNL was offered work to commission 188 towers, while the rest were to be constructed by RTIL in the state.

The DoT, after examining the tower vis-à-vis guidelines set by it, would handover the installation to the service providers—Bharti Airtel, Reliance Telecom and the Reliance Infocomm in case of Jharkhand—to install their separate wireless antennas.

Joint Controller of Communication Accounts (JtCCA) Sanjeevan Sinha, who is coordinating the scheme for Jharkhand on the DoT’s behalf, said that the IPs might have to pay the penalty if they declined handing over the installation within the stipulated time.

“Once the DoT receives complete installation, then only we could allow the second phase of work, i.e. installation of radio equipment,” Sinha added.

As per the proposed plan, DoT intends to extend mobile—both GSM and the CDMA—network coverage to over 14 lakh households, thereby extending the mobile facility accessible for around 79 lakh people.

Financial incentives would be offered to the IPs on the annual basis for five years, against which they are assigned the task of identifying locations, acquire sites and erect steel towers and maintain it for the same period.

While BSNL Chief Engineer VK Malhan attributed rising cost of steel and cement to the delayed work, RTIL officials cited problems in land acquisitions as the reason for lingering the project.

Sinha, on the other hand sought to defer with the contentions of the IPs, saying that they had not submitted the same in writing so far.

Referring to RTIL complaints, Sinha and IP representatives called on state Home Secretary Sudhir Tripathi and DGP VD Ram, last month, who assured full cooperation to ensure early completion of the project.