Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad announced this at a Press conference called here on Tuesday to list achievements of communication and information technology ministries under him. He also announced his orders to BSNL, MTNL and post offices to make commercial use of their properties.
Calling for more towers, called Base Transceiver Stations (BTS), to reduce the menace of mobile call drops, he dismissed the “false campaign” on radiation threat from them, he said the government would look into it only when there is “clear and tangible evidence” of any such harm. The technology cannot be shut just because there is radiation not only from towers but many other equipment like x-ray machines, he said.
Prasad also indicated plans of incentives and disincentives to the private telecom operators to cut down the call drops. He pointed out how commissioning of 15,000 towers by BSNL in the last one year has resulted in less call drops, less congestion and growth in the data usage. It is setting up another 25,645 towers at a cost of Rs 4805 crore. Similarly, MTNL, another state phone company that operates only in Delhi and Mumbai, will add 1680 towers in each metropolis.
The minister took pride in pointing out that both BSNL and MTNL have reversed the negative growth of the previous years, the BSNL adding 47 lakh subscribers and MTNL 2.11 lakh in 2014-15.
He noted that there are now one billion phones in India in both government and private sector, 97.7 crore of which are mobiles that will itself hit a billion in another two, three months. He also announced Taj Mahal in Agra to have the free Wi-Fi facility very soon as part of setting up such facility for tourists in all major tourist spots in the next two years. Free Wi-Fi services have been already started in Varanasi while 2500 such hotspots are planned in the current financial year.
Prasad also unveiled plans to have telecom in every corner of India by providing mobile connectivity to all uncovered villages in border states as also Himalayan states and installation of the mobile towers in the naxal-affected areas.
He also dwelt upon a bunch of the government’s initiatives in the IT sector in the lat one year like “Khoya-Paya” for tracking lost children, national scholarship portal where one can check on various scholarships, “Jeevan Pranam” to get digital certificates, eBasta for students to have their books on the net, digital locker for a citizen to keep all his certificates in safe digital vault and e-hospital to secure fixed date appointments in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).
