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India: TRAI wants incentives to operators to expand rural telephony Print E-mail
Tuesday, 16 August 2005
Pradip Baijal, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) Chairperson, has made a case for providing incentives, including lower priced spectrum, to operators for entering rural areas.

The Government has set a teledensity (fixed plus mobile) target of 15% by 2010. Penetration reached 9.86% at the end of July. Urban teledensity is currently 30% while rural teledensity is 1.75%.

For phones, Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran has announced a target of 250 million lines by 2007, of which 180 million are expected to be mobiles.

''Towers must be set up in rural areas, in the absence of which it will be difficult to take the growth curve up. For this, incentives should be given,'' Mr Baijal added.

The Indian telecommunications sector added 2.72 million subscribers in July 2005, taking the subscriber base (fixed and mobile) to almost 107 million.

A review of the country’s Access Deficit Charge (ADC) will be submitted to the Government within the next 15 days. It is expected that the regulatory regime will gradually move towards a revenue-based model and that the ADC will merge with the Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund by 2008.

Source: Digitalopportunity.org - WDR/Intelecon Regulatory News