By IANS,
New Delhi : The government Friday asked the state-owned telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) to start installation of public telephones in 50,000 villages.
“BSNL has already commenced work on this second phase of Village Public Telephone (VPT) scheme,” the Department of Telecom said here in a statement.
“These 50,000 villages include new villages appearing in Census 2001, villages with population less than 100 and those left out earlier because of various reasons,” it added.
The installation of public telephones in all villages is expected to be completed by the end of next year.
VPTs will come up in such uncovered villages with subsidy support from DoT’s Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund.
The government is already providing subsidised public telephone facility to 66,822 villages not covered under the Bharat Nirman programme, which aims at providing public telephony in rural india.
Currently, 54,700 villages are covered under this scheme.
All villages have been brought under the scheme except those having population of less than 100 or those lying in deep forests or hit by insurgency.
About 5,000 remotely located villages are being provided with VPT using satellite technology.
BSNL till date has provided telephones to 550,000 villages across the country.
The company’s GSM mobile coverage has reached out to about 256,000 villages, while 75 percent of the villages are covered by BSNL through its wireless local loop (WLL) network.