MINISTER OF STATE FOR COMMUNICATIONS,
HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT AND
ELECTRONICS & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
(SHRI SANJAY DHOTRE)
(a) The percentage share of mobile subscribers of BSNL and private telecom service providers in their respective Licensed Service Areas (LSAs) consisting of State/UTs in the country is detailed at Annexure-I.
(b) & (c) Yes Sir, Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has estimated around 27,721 inhabited villages in the country as per recent survey carried out by DoT LSA units & Telecom Service Providers (TSPs), which do not have mobile coverage, as detailed in Annexure-II & the steps taken by Government are given below:
• The Government has planned to cover all uncovered villages in a phased manner, utilizing the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).
• Government prioritized to reach remote areas of the country such as North-Eastern States, Islands, Himalayan States, Western Border States and more importantly the Left Wing Extremism affected areas in the first phase.
• Under Left Wing Extremism (LWE) affected areas Phase-I project, Government had approved for installation of towers in 2355 locations in 10 states. As on date, 2343 towers are radiating for providing coverage to about 3500 villages in 10 states.
• Under LWE Phase-II project, mobile connectivity, by using 2G + 4G technology, is to be provided in inhabited and uncovered villages at 2217 tower locations.
• A Comprehensive Telecom Development Plan is under implementation for North Eastern Region to provide mobile coverage in uncovered villages, along with National Highways and to strengthen transmission network.
• Scheme for providing mobile connectivity in 354 villages of uncovered border areas, Ladakh and Kargil Region and other priority areas is under implementation.
• A scheme for provisioning of 4G based Mobile service in 502 uncovered villages of Aspirational districts of four states Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh & Rajasthan has been approved on 20.12.2019.
(d) & (e) LSA-wise number of 4G-LTE Base Transceivers Stations (BTSs) in the county as on 31st March, 2014 & 29th January, 2020 are detailed at Annexure-III.
Government has taken several policy initiatives to facilitate infrastructure growth for delivery of quality services. These include permitting trading/sharing/liberalisation of spectrum, permitting passive & active infrastructure sharing, notification of Right of Way Rules 2016, making available government land/buildings for installations of towers etc. Telecom Service Providers also install mobile towers and BTSs on continuous basis to improve coverage and/or capacity of their networks based on their techno-commercial requirements. As a result, number of 4G BTSs have been increased from 3862 as on 31st March, 2014 to 14,06,171 on 29th January, 2020 across the country.
(f) The download/upload speed of mobile internet is dependent on number of factors such as technology (2G/3G/4G-LTE), closeness to the cell serving the customer, the number of users being served by the cell, the traffic handled by the cell, the user equipment/mobile handset used by the customer etc. As such, the mobile users may experience different speeds at different locations and time of usage and there is no mechanism to assess the speed experienced by all the users in a particular village or town. However, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has been obtaining data about download and upload speed of different service providers for different wireless technologies through crowd sourcing using the TRAI MySpeed App and the reports are available to the public on TRAI - “MySpeed” Portal. As per the data collected through Crowd Sourcing, the average download, over a period of last six months for 4G services is at Annexure-IV.
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