Rajya Sabha
As many as 10,263 villages in North Eastern Region have been provided telecom facility on Wireless in Local Loop (WLL) system. This was stated by the Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology Dr. Shakeel Ahmad in a written reply to a question by Shri Dwijendra Nath Sharmah in the Rajya Sabha today. He informed the Members that 6,344 villages are yet to be provided with telecom facility on WLL system in North Eastern region. He added that permission to commission WLL system in North Eastern Region was received only in the last week of August 2002, leading to delay in the process of procurement of equipment and its installation.
The Minister further informed the House that the Government is providing communication facilities in rural areas through following means:-
Postal communication facilities are provided in the rural areas in terms of delivery of dak at the door step throughout the country, collection of mails from villages with population over 300 and sale of stamps and stationery to customer at their door step in the rural areas. Postal counter facilities are provided through a network of 1,55,837 post offices of which 89% are in the rural areas. The Department of Posts has also launched e-post facilities throughout the country. Under its scheme e-mail message booked at any post office in the country are sent through Internet medium to any postal address in the country by downloading, printing and sending out delivery through normal posting channels. The Government has planned to provide telecom facility in each revenue village of the country through wireless, wireline and satellite media. Additionally, telecom facilities are being provided by BSNL through Grameen Sanchar Sewak (GSS) Scheme with the active cooperation from Department of Posts. BSNL plans to cover 80,828 villages with telecom facility during Tenth Five Year Plan period. Telecom facilities are also being extended in rural areas through GSS scheme run by Non-Government Organisation in West Bengal. Financial support from Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) is being provided to meet the net cost for operation and maintenance of Village Public Telephones (VPTs) in the revenue villages identified as per Census 1991, installation of VPTs in the additional revenue villages as per Census 2001 and replacement of Multi Access Radio Relay (MARR) technology VPTs installed before 1.4.2002. Financial support from USO Fund is also being provided for upgradation of public telephones to public tele-information centres and installation of high speed public telecom information centres in Block Headquarters and villages with population exceeding 2000.