India Telecom

September 2, 2002
A billion telephones for India within a few years: Pramod Mahajan

NEW DELHI -- Marking one year of his stewardship of the Communications Ministry, Union Communications, IT and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan has set a new target. After raising the teledensity from 3.5 percent to 4.5 percent in the last twelve months, he is planning to provide a billion people with telephone access within a few years. He described the new strategy as a "dream project" to take telephone access to people at their doorsteps across the country in a major quantum leap.

In this innovative strategy, Mahajan will make use of the large army of postmen to take mobile phones with their letter delivery and reach out as mobile PCO to villagers across the length and breadth of India. This will be in addition to the rapid increase in landlines. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), the government owned telecom incumbent, will convert all of the 170,000 village post offices into mobile centers. As each post office serves three to four villages, the entire country of one billion plus people will be covered by telecom access in this imaginative scheme.

The scheme will make use of WLL technology. Mahajan said LG has promised to develop special mobile handset that will show the bill for the call on the screen that the postman renamed Gram Sanchar Sevak will carry with him. The scheme will first be inaugurated in 2,000 villages on Christmas Day 2002 -- which is also the birthday of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee -- and then extended to all of the 170,000 post offices in a few years.

The postman carrying the mobile phone will have a special uniform that will be open to commercial advertising. The Minister appealed to businesses to advertise on this uniform and even sponsor it with logos to reach out to villages. BSNL had already brought telephones to one lakh villages over the last 12 months, he added. In its 150-plus-year old communication ministry, posts and telecom were separated in 1985 to enable each one of them to grow by its own steam. Now, the largely loss making Department of Posts is using telecom to improve its earnings and diversifying services. The dream project announced by Mahajan will be a striking example of Posts and Telecom coming together after their separation.

The occasion was also used to unveil the huge brand-building project of BSNL, the incumbent telecom operator owned by the government. 'CellOne' is the brand name of BSNL's cellular service and 'Excel', the prepaid phone card and WebFone for Internet telephony. Mahajan predicted that competition would bring down national long distance (NLD) call charges to Rs 5 per minute and international long distance (ILD) call charges to Rs 10 per minute. CellOne would be launched from October 2 in 350 cities and towns. By Christmas, 830 more cities would be connected and by March 2003, all districts of would be connected.

Giving details of his PSUs' programs for a big thrust in services, the Minister challenged the private sector to match his range of services and capacity to beat down prices. He assured the telecom industry that the next 12 months will see the inter-industry conflicts resolved. Among the thrust areas BSNL will undertake are provision of cell phones in all state capitals by October 2, 2002, and in 850 cities by Christmas Day, and to every district headquarters by March 2003. WLL connectivity will be provided to 1,200 short distance call areas (SDCAs) this year and then to all the 2,647 SDCAs.

The Minister also inaugurated a 25 paise post card "Meghdoot" with an advertising part that is supposed to make the scheme paying. Meghdoot is derived from Kalidasa's classical Sanskrit poem of the same name in which the fourth century poet imagines a huge cloud carrying his message to his beloved travelling across from one end of the country to another. The poet instructs the cloud messenger about the geography of the country as it moves northward. The brand name is therefore very appropriate for the post card.