AUSPI, a telecom industry body representing Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices and Sistema Shyam (MTS India), has opposed the Government’s Rs 4,000 crore rural Wi-Fi connectivity project.
The Wi-Fi connectivity project is aimed at setting up Wi-Fi hotspots in nearly 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats.
The companies have told the Ministry of IT & Communications that the Government would do well to utilize existing telecom infrastructure in these villages instead of creating parallel networks, Hindu Business Line reported.
AUSPI president CS Rao termed this project as a waste of money because Wi-Fi is not an outdoor technology. He feels that matured and tested technologies such as 3G and GPRS can do well than Wi-Fi.
Initiated by the Ministry of Rural Development, the project has been linked to the Department of Telecom’s National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN), which is being rolled out to expand high-speed broadband services to villages. The Rs 20,000 plus crore NOFN project is facing unexpected delays due to lack of proper planning and support from all stakeholders, the report said.
As per the Wi-Fi connectivity project, the initial funding to create the Wi-Fi zones will come from the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF), which pools the cess levied on telecom companies to provide rural connectivity. The annual operational expenditure of around Rs 2,000 crore will be funded by the Rural Development Ministry.
While the optical fibre network will be rolled out up to the Gram Panchayats, the last-mile connectivity will be given to villagers using Wi-Fi routers. Every Gram Panchayat will be connected by a 100 Mbps line. This means that if 10 users latch on to a Wi-Fi hotspot, each user will get 10 Mbps each.
Interestingly, the protest against the USOF is growing. Recently, Reliance Communications and BSNL have asked the Department of Telecom to allow them to exit the rural telephony project. Reliance Communications had got access to 72 clusters of villages while BSNL got the contract for 58 clusters of villages.
The government had invited bids in 2007 to create telecom infrastructure and provide services in villages. The scheme under the Universal Services Obligation fund had also offered subsidy payments to the telecom companies for six years. However, in the initial enthusiasm to grab the project, the operators opted to roll out services without seeking subsidy and some even offered to pay to the government.
