In fact, lately the services have gone from bad to worse. Yes, agreed that the usage has increased especially during and after the COVID pandemic due to online school classes, work from home and also due to the ongoing state Assembly polls. But the load on infrastructure cannot be blamed on the above issues. It is time that the service providers who send minimum of ten short messages services (SMS) per day to each of their customers to inform them about their new products should immediately improve their services. Yes, installation of the transmitting towers are also an issue and this needs to be done on a war footing as India is fast going digital and even normal payments to vegetable vendors are done through mobile networks.
Several representations have been made to the Chief Minister seeking his intervention with the service provider companies and in turn he has also met the service providers in July last year and informed them about the Telecom Infrastructure Policy which will help the telecom service providers to install towers. However, despite all such efforts the quality of services remains below standard and that too in the State which is known world across as a tourist destination.
On January 2 last year the Chief Minister had tweeted that as many as 138 mobile towers would be set up in the second phase of the plan. “Glad to announce that our government under the Goa Telecom Infrastructure Policy 2020, has proposed setting up of mobile towers at 62 locations in the first phase,” the chief minister had said. “This will greatly improve connectivity and benefit all sections of the society including students, IT professionals, tech start-ups, etc,” he had added.
It has been over a year now and there are no updates on this issue. This Telecom Infrastructure Policy 2020 aims to fulfill peoples’ expectations of fast and reliable connectivity whether for calls or for Internet connection anywhere and anytime. The demand for Internet connectivity, through mobile or broadband connectivity, has exploded. Increasing the number of people who are connecting to the Internet and trying to avail every expanding universe of online services, for example social media, online and mobile banking, G2C services, Video-on-demand, etc.
Goa has one of the highest per capita incomes in India. Ten years ago, Goa was pioneering in expanding the broadband connectivity up to village level through Goa Broad Band Network (GBBN). With time, the State needs to evolve its policy to facilitate the creation of the telecom infrastructure comparable to the best in the world, to attract the talent and technology needed to support an advanced economy.
On the floor of the Assembly in July last year the Chief Minister had announced that the Centre had agreed to consider implementation of the BharatNet optical fibre broadband project in Goa through public private partnership model along with 16 other States in India. He had also informed the Assembly that the schools are following various alternative communicative methods like worksheets, WhatsApp and meeting with parents and students in order to continue the learning process and warned that the Goa Broad Band Network (GBBN) cannot be used to provide Wi-Fi connectivity for schools due to low bandwidth. “We tried with five schools initially,” he said. When will BharatNet see the light of the day?
The picture is clear. The State government does understand the woes of the mobile and Internet users but to set the infrastructure right and effective it takes a long time, much to the dismay of the common device users. On several social media platforms the aggrieved mobile users have written, “What's the use of paying money for data or calls? Considering Goa’s image as a tourist destination, the mobile companies should ensure top end connectivity at all times.”
In Goa many users have now started to port their numbers to a different service provider for want of better connectivity and service. People landing in Goa from outside the State have also regularly complained about the poor mobile or net services in the State. It is a matter of concern and it is time that the service providers must pull up their socks to provide a decent service on their own.