The government has informed the parliament that telecom equipment worth Rs 69.11 billion has been exported by companies selected under the production linked incentive (PLI) scheme for telecom and networking products till May 31, 2023.
In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, Devusinh Chauhan, Union Minister of State for Communications, said that the government has taken various initiatives including the PLI scheme, a telecom technology development fund scheme and digital communication innovation square (DCIS) under champion services sector scheme to make India a global manufacturing hub. The country has also designed and developed its own 4G/5G technology stacks and the deployment has started in Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL).
Regarding 5G services, Chauhan said that so far, 281,948 5G sites have been set up by telecom operators. As per the data shared by the minister, of the total 5G sites, 228,689 have been set up by Reliance Jio and 53,223 by Bharti Airtel. Vodafone Idea Limited (Vi) has also set up 36 5G sites in Pune and Delhi.
Separately, Chauhan informed that a total of 194,000 gram panchayats (GPs) have been made service-ready under the BharatNet project in the country, as of March 30, 2023. 190,105 GPs have been made service-ready on optical fibre cable (OFC) media by laying 643,450 km OFC. Further, 4,806 GPs have been made service-ready on satellite media. BharatNet has been utilised for providing 567,306 fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband connections as on July 3, 2023. The minister added that as of June 30, 2023, a sum of 371.72 billion has been allocated under the BharatNet project from the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF). The total funding for both phases of the project, approved by the union cabinet, is Rs 420.68 billion, as per the minister.
Further, Chauhan stated that the government launched an interactive voice response system (IVRS) in December 2016 for call drops wherein around 68.7 million subscribers have been individually contacted out of which 7.98 million subscribers have participated in the survey up to April 2023. The minister informed that the feedback is shared with respective telcos for taking corrective action in a time-bound manner. This has resulted in about 180,000 call drop cases being resolved and around 8,357 base transceiver stations (BTSs) have been installed by telecom operators to resolve call drop issues received through IVRS.
