The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) are yet to decide the rollout obligations for 3G and broadband operators in rural areas.
The guidelines issued before the 2010 spectrum auction states that operators are required to ensure that at least 15 per cent of the district headquarters (DHQ) using 3G spectrum should be rural short distance changing areas (SDCA) within five years. Rural SDCA is defined as an area where 50 per cent of the population lives in rural areas.
In the case of broadband, operators are required to cover at least 50 per cent of the rural SDCAs within five years.
The main issue is that DoT does not have any list of such rural SDCAs. So, it has suggested establishing a committee to form a list based on the census.
Prior to this, the Telecom Enforcement, Resource Monitoring (TERM) wing of DoT had attempted to collate the data for Haryana, based on the percent of rural population in a particular SDCA.
However, the list prepared by the TERM cell had classified towns like Gurgaon and Panchkula as rural.
