Kapil Sibal, Minister of Communications and IT, has established a panel under R. Chandrashekhar, secretary, Department of Telecommunications (DoT), to ascertain the reasons for delays in providing mobile services in rural areas under the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund scheme.
This comes after DoT was criticised for having reduced the penalty imposed on Reliance Communications (RCOM), which had switched off services in a few of the areas for a short span of time.
The panel is expected to submit its report within eight weeks and comprises various members of the USOF.
In 2007, the USOF scheme was launched to provide subsidy support for establishing and managing 7,871 infrastructure sites in 500 districts in specified rural and remote areas.
Operators such as Bharti airtel, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), Aircel, Idea Cellular, RCOM and Vodafone Essar were a part of the scheme.
According to an internal DoT note, of the total 7,871 towers and sites, only 7,289 have been commissioned until now and 64 are yet to be commissioned. Similarly, of the total 21,849 base transceiver systems (BTS) to be commissioned, 6,640 BTSs are yet to be commissioned, resulting in pendency of 30.39 per cent till date.
Meanwhile, operators have furnished various reasons for delays in the scheme. RCOM, for example, had contended that the delay in rolling out mobile services was due to land issues and had asked the USOF to discount four pending sites in Kerala. Also, BSNL attributed the delays in rolling out services to insurgency, land disputes and natural calamities.
Bharti airtel contended that the sites in
