In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Milind Deora, Minister for State for Communications and IT, said that as per the survey carried out by the Telecom Enforcement, Resource and Monitoring Cell of Department of Telecommunications (DoT) about 57,271 villages in the country are yet to be connected with mobile services.
As per Deora, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has planned to provide connectivity to technically feasible uncovered villages with basic telephone facility by March 31, 2013. Of the total 57,271 villages, Odisha had the highest number of villages uncovered by mobile services (6,734), followed by Chhattisgarh (5,460), Maharashtra (5,394), Jharkhand (5,308) and Uttar Pradesh (5,013). Kerala had all its homes covered with mobile services, while in Delhi only one village lacked mobile services.
Further a total of 13,438 villages in the country are yet to be connected with basic telephone facility (landline and wireless local loop). At 2,232 villages, Andhra Pradesh has the highest number of villages without basic telephone facility (landline and WLL), followed by Odisha (1,860), Maharashtra (1,669), Chhattisgarh (1,552) and Gujarat (1,012).
According to Deora, there have been delays by private operators as well as by BSNL in launching their mobile services under the shared infrastructure scheme as part of Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF). He said that financial penalties have been imposed on companies for delay in rollout of services as per the provisions of the agreement(s) signed with concerned company. Moreover, Reliance Communications (RCOM) and Reliance Telecom Limited (RTL) switched off their mobile base transceiver stations (BTSs) at 1,191 and 228 USOF supported sites respectively causing interruption of mobile services in concerned areas during November 2010 to February 2011.
The government imposed and recovered financial penalty of Rs 45.90 million and Rs 10.70 million from RTL for the interruption in mobile telephony services.
