Connecting Bharat

Posted on | October 25, 2005 |

Sunil Jain has a good article in Business Standard discussing TRAI’s latest recommendations on rural telephony.

Since 2002, the government has levied a cess of 5% on telephone bills to fund rural phones through the Universal Service Obligation fund. The USO Fund collected a whopping Rs 7,254 crore till April but had disbursed only Rs 1,815 crore of this. TRAI says a total of Rs 30,457 crore will be needed by 2010 to have around 28 million rural phones (as compared to 13.6 million currently), resulting in a rural teledensity of around 4%.

TRAI has suggested an innovative approach for utilising USO funds.

So, Trai’s paper recommends the USO be given for mobiles as well, but the real innovation lies in the approach

Category: Rural

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