Rural telephone in India (from Rabin Patra's email on Tier)

The Telecom Regulatory Authority in India has released its recommendations for rural telephony in India: http://www.trai.gov.in/pr3oct05.htm

This recognises the importance of shared backbone infrastructure, Some of the most relevant recommendations are:
- No prior SACFA clearance for deployment of towers upto 40 m. in rural areas.
- No spectrum fees for usage of CorDECT and similar technologies in rural areas as well as for usage of 450 MHz
- No right of way charges for networks in rural areas

In brief: There is large differential between rural (1.94%)
and urban tele-density (31.1%) in India.

The Indian rural market is very differnt:
- cable TV in India has more penetration than telephones.
- substantial purchasing power if the price of produce is right,

This approach proposes to offer financial incentives to service providers in the form of coverage of partial cost of shared infrastructure and license fee and spectrum charge reduction based on the number of rural base station locations.

Change from a universal obligation (USO) model to one where incentives
are given for rural networks.

Other recommendations:
- Sharing of infrastructure to receive support from USO
- Discount in Annual License Fee and Spectrum Charges
linked with Rural Coverage.
- Supporting backbone infrastructure through USO fund

Proposal is to provide a subsidy of Rs 6,500 crore (~$1.5 billion)
for installing 15,000 base stations in rural areas
such that they are shared by at least three service providers.

The full recommendations are here: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~rkpatra/Stuff/recom3oct05.pdf

New story: http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=79129