Speaking at the '10 GSM' programme organised by Airtel and CII in Kolkata, Union Minister of state for Communications and IT Shakeel Ahmad said more efforts were needed on the part of private operators in increasing rural teledensity, which was now 1.4 per cent.
Ahmad said the Universal Service Obligation fund, which had been formed from a part of license fees paid by the operators to the government, would be used in providing rural telephony across the country.
The scheme was being implemented through agreements with BSNL, Tata and Reliance, the administrators of the USO fund, the minister said.
At present, the corpus of the USO fund was Rs 200 crore (Rs 2 billion), according to Ahmad. The minister said the target was to connect all the villages by December 2006.
Ahmad said the government had set a target to achieve 250 million telephone connections by December 2007.
He said by that period, another 150 million connections would have to be added, of which 70 million to 75 million would be contributed by public sector operators BSNL and MTNL.
Ahmad said private sector players had also played an important role in increasing the number of telephone connections in the last three years.
The minister said India was among the top five countries in the world in terms of telecom market, with a teledensity close to 10 per cent.
Asked whether the government was coming out with guidelines in respect to foreign direct investment in the telecom sector, the minister said it was under consideration and was likely to announced soon.
Chairman of Cellular Operators Association of India, T V Ramachandran said at present, the number of GSM subscribers in India was 60 million.
He said the growth in GSM telephony was the highest in the telecom segment, including fixed line and CDMA.
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