Thomas K. Thomas

New Delhi, Sept. 13 In a bid to encourage operators to share their telecom infrastructure in the rural areas, the Department of Telecom has offered to upgrade the optic fibre cable network of all the operators who will allow other operators to use it. DoT has proposed to fund the network augmentation through the Universal Services Obligation kitty.

In a communication sent to all the operators, it has asked the service providers to give details of their optic fibre cable network across the country which can be shared for better mobile coverage in rural areas. These cables will be used as backhaul connectivity between cellular towers.

Backhaul connectivity is used by mobile operators to connect their base stations and mobile towers situated in far-flung areas. Since spectrum is a scarce resource, most operators prefer to carry such long haul traffic through cable. However, most of the fixed line network in the country, especially in rural areas, is owned by BSNL, which is no mood to share it with other operators.

While the USO fund has made elaborate plans to set up about 18,000 towers across the country to offer mobile connectivity to remote villages, backhaul link is a major concern for the operators who have been mandated to complete the project.

“Service providers have been raising their concern about the non-availability of sufficient backhaul capacity to integrate the voice and data traffic from the access network in rural areas. It is a critical factor and constitutes a bottleneck towards achieving the objective of comprehensive rural connectivity. It is our appreciation that several service providers have an optic fibre cable network up to the district headquarters. However, backhaul capacity between district headquarters and block headquarters is reportedly deficient,” said the DoT letter to the operators.

While the USO fund has launched a scheme for supporting shared infrastructure for cellular services, the move to support sharing of backhaul cable network is being seen as the next step in this regard. DoT has appointed Telecom Consultants India Ltd to collect information from all the service providers to identify operators which have fibre connectivity between block headquarters and district headquarters.

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