The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) plans to impose a penalty on operators who fail to fulfill their rural rollout commitments under the shared mobile infrastructure policy of the Universal Services Obligation (USO) Fund.
The shared mobile infrastructure policy was unveiled four years ago to provide subsidy support to operators for setting up and managing around 8,000 telecom towers across 500 districts in rural and remote areas.
Further, it is believed that apart from imposing a hefty penalty and forfeiting bank guarantees, DoT also plans to empower the USO Fund Administrator to cancel contracts, if an operator does not comply within 90 days after missing its rollout deadline.
Under the current rules, each tower has to be shared by three operators for providing mobile coverage in the country’s rural pockets. Prior to this, several operators defaulted on their rollout obligation under the shared mobile infrastructure scheme.
Also, Reliance Communications (RCOM) and Bharti airtel had wanted to opt out of the USO Fund scheme, on grounds that it was not commercially viable. Both operators wanted to manage fewer telecom towers in rural pockets under shared infrastructure.
