The department of telecom is considering the option of sharing infrastructure in rural and remote areas where mobile operators are not keen to go mainly due to the heavy cost of laying the infrastructure.
After BSNL expressed reservations about sharing its infrastructure, the DoT is considering it to take it upon itself as a 'facilitator' for which it would float a separate tender to create the telecom infrastructure, officials told PTI.
Telecom service providers as well as Infrastructure-I and II providers will be eligible to participate in the tender and the selected bidder will be funded out of the Universal Service Obligations Fund and there will be a lock-in period for this bidder also to recover its investments, if the proposal is finalised.
Once the infrastructure is ready, mobile operators could share the infrastructure by paying some nominal fee to DoT to offer the service, officials said, adding this option is currently under discussion and has not reached any stage of finalisation.
The government's target of having 250 million (Rs 2.5 crore) phones by 2007 from the current 100 million (10 crore) phones will require a paradigm shift in telecom policy and industry at this juncture can not afford to have duplicate infrastructure and like in case of power, roads and water, the government should build the infrastructure and that should be shared by all operators, they said.
The DoT is also considering giving spectrum to the mobile operators in rural areas for nominal charges for their services. There is a lot of free spectrum there and it could be used in the best possible way by this, officials said.
Recently telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran had said that the government was considering incentives for mobile operators to reach out to rural areas.
Most of India's rural addressable market is still untapped by mobile operators due to heavy infrastructure costs.
As private operators have decided to pay five per cent of their revenue to USO rather than meeting the obligations, if DoT creates the infrastructure, the mobile operators could tap these markets unhindered as a fresh source of revenue with the saturation of metro and densely populated circles, officials said.
At present there are 1.2 crore (12 million) rural telephone connections. Out of 6.5 lakh villages, over 5.2 lakh villages had been provided with the village public telephones and the remaining would be covered by November 2007, according to DoT's action plan.
The USO fund has already awarded contracts to various operators through tenders. Dayanidhi Maran in the parliamentary consultative committee meeting attached to his ministry earlier this month had said a concerted approach was needed to increasing tele-density in rural areas.