The Hindu : Cellphones for remote villages

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Apr 03, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu

Cellphones for remote villages

By Our Staff Reporter

RANIPET April 2. About 2000 postmen will be pressed into service throughout the country to carry cell phones to villages not covered by basic phone services, according to the Union Minister of State for Communication and Information Technology, Su.Thirunavukkarasar . The "postmen-cum-cellmen" will provide the facility to villagers who want to use it to communicate with their friends or relatives. Vellore district will have six `cellmen'.

The number of telephone connections in the country, which was two crores in 1998 when A.B.Vajpayee took over as Prime Minister had been doubled in just five years, Mr.Thirunavukkarasar said here on Tuesday while dedicating a new telephone exchange building and inaugurating a 5000-Line OCB-283 New Technological Exchange established at a total cost of Rs.6 crores.

The number of cell phone connections had risen from three lakhs in 1998 to 1.50 crores now.

This included 25 lakh connections of BSNL services and three lakh of MTNL. Tamil Nadu had 40 lakh BSNL phone connections covering 80 per cent of the population. Eighty-four towns in Tamil Nadu, which were located on the National Highways, had been provided with cell phone connection by BSNL, he said.

Responding to the plea of Arakkonam MP, S. Jagathrakshakan, for extension of cell phone service to the Cheyyar area, the Minister said the service would be extended not only to Cheyyar, but also Arni, Polur, Gudiyatham and other nearby areas within four months. He also responded favourably to a plea of the Ranipet SIDCO Entrepreneurs Association for the introduction of Wireless in Local Loop (WLL) telephones in the SIPCOT industrial area. Three thousand WLL connections have already been provided in and around Ranipet.

The IT infrastructure comprising both software and hardware worth Rs. 1 lakh each would be provided by the IT Ministry to about 25 schools in Arakkonam constituency, comprising at least two schools in each of the six Assembly segments— Arakkonam, Ranipet, Arcot, Sholinghur, Cheyyar and Thiruvallur. The facility would be provided on a written request from the headmasters.

K. Mahadevan, Chief General Manager, BSNL, Tamil Nadu Telecom Circle, said that the new 5000-line Exchange could handle 12 lakh busy call hour attempts per day as against one lakh capacity of the existing C-DOT exchange.

WLL phones could also be connected to the new exchange which was additionally equipped with the Integrated Subscriber Digital Network (ISDN) facility.

The CGM said that 1.59 lakh lines had been added in the Tamil Nadu Telecom Circle in 2003-2004 as against a target of 1.04 lakh and 99,180 phone connections had been given this year against a target of 84,000. In the cell phone category, only 1.60 lakh connections had been provided during the year, against a target of two lakhs.

S. Balachandran, General Manager, BSNL, Vellore said the new OCB exchange was equipped with the Calling Line Identification Processing (CLIP) facility. K.Muralidharan, Deputy General Manager, BSNL, Vellore proposed a vote of thanks.

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