The vision of Ram Vilas Paswan, minister for communications, is "To provide connectivity to all villages by March 2002." Things have not moved in the same way as the minister would have expected but at least the service providers have started taking the initiative. Last year we had 12 VPTs installed collectively by all the private players and this year the number stands at 416 (till February 2001), a growth of approximately 34 times.

Connecting 6,07,000 villages in the country is not an easy task, as around 2,00,000 villages are yet to be connected and around 2,11,000 villages that were connected through Multi Access Rural Radio (MARR) have to be replaced with either WLL or satellite phones as most of them are non-functional. The private players have to install 2,58,000 VPTs and BSNL has to deploy 1,50,000 VPTs in the country. BSNL is proceeding at a fast pace as the company has procured 6,00,000 fixed wireless terminals from Lucent, LG and Hyundai for VPT and these would be deployed in 2001-02. On the other hand, the private players are lagging way behind the incumbent operator, BSNL.

Presently, Bharti Telenet and Shyam Telelink are the only players who have installed VPTs in the country. But
service providers like Tata Teleservices are also moving aggressively and the company plans to deploy 100 VPTs. With the new service providers entering fixed services, it will be easier as the numbers will be divided by multiples of five or seven.

The private players have to move at a faster pace if they want to connect all the villages. Technology is not a problem as one can use WLL technology to provide connectivity at cheaper rates. So, providing connectivity to all villages seems achievable in the present circumstances.

Pravin Prashant