The private telecom operators Airtel, Reliance, Vodafone, Idea, etc have failed to implement the roll out obligations for expansion of mobile telecom services in rural areas covering 2.5 lakh villages. The project was supported by USO) fund. Against a target of commissioning mobile services on 21,607 tower sites, the operators have done 15,309 even after being given repeated extension by the USO fund administrator. The biggest defaulters are Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group companies Reliance Communications and Reliance Telecom, which have fallen short by 65 per cent and 47 per cent of their respective targets. R Com and Reliance Telecom have approached DoT in 2009 seeking to exit from 4537 and 751 mobile sites respectively on the grounds of un-viability. Bharti Airtel had also put in a similar request for 81 sites.
The failure of these operators against the agreed commissioning of the tower sites is--- Reliance Communications= 65%, Reliance Telecom=47%,Aircel=27%, Airtel=19%, Vodafone=14% and Idea=8.5%. The failure rate in case of BSNL is only 4%. There is a proposal in DoT for blocklisting Reliance Communications, Bharti Airtel, and Aircel from participating in future rural telephony projects supported by USO fund. At the same time there is a concern in DoT that if these five private operators are blacklisted, it will leave only one or two players for future USO projects.(News from “The Hindu Business Line” dated 5-11-2011).
Thus it is clear that for the private operators profit is first and people last. If the telecom sector is left to the mercy of these private operators, the people in loss making rural, remote, hilly and backward areas will not get the required telecom services. Hence it is necessary to strengthen the PSUs BSNL and MTNL.
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