India Expects to Triple Phone Connections to 100 Mln by 2004
By Abhay Singh
New Delhi, Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- India expects to more than triple the current number of phones to 100 million connections by 2004, said Pramod Mahajan, minister for communications and information technology.
``I wouldn't like to officially revise targets but we should have 100 million phones before we go to the polls in 2004,'' said Mahajan, in response to a question at the Economic Editor's conference in New Delhi. ``Unless you excite people it's not going to happen.''
India has fewer than three phones for every 100 people as compared with a world average of about 15. Increasing the number of phones is crucial to the government's target of achieving an average 8 percent growth in the economy to double per capita income in ten years.
The country's official target for phone penetration is 75 million lines by 2005 and 175 million connections by 2010. The government estimates achieving these would require $37 billion of investment in the next four years and $69 billion in the five years to 2010.
The task of building the networks would rest equally with state-owned companies such as Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., the country's largest phone company, and private players such as Tata Teleservices Ltd., said Mahajan.
The minister's optimism may be because of new rules announced in January that allow fixed-line phone operators to use Qualcomm Inc.'s Code Division Multiple Access, or CDMA, technology to offer limited range mobile phone services.
The technology permits companies to avoid laying expensive networks by using wireless connections much like a mobile phone.
The key difference between the CDMA connections and regular mobile networks that use the Global System for Mobile communications, or GSM, standard is that calls from the former cost almost a third of the latter.
Cellular operators have taken the government to court over the issue. A decision is expected later this year.
Despite the case, Mahajan said Bharat Sanchar will unveil the so called limited mobility services in 22 cities by end of this year and will install a further 600,000 lines in villages by December next year.
``We can meet the target, provided we have the funds,'' said D.P.S. Seth, chairman and managing director of Bharat Sanchar, at the same conference.
Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd., the second biggest fixed phone operator, will also introduce the CDMA-based service in Mumbai city with a capacity of 50,000 lines this year, said Mahajan. The service was reintroduced in the capital Delhi earlier this month. |
