Lok Sabha Question No. 2594 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2021-08-04
Subject: Network Services in Far Flung Areas
Ministry: COMMUNICATIONS
Asked by: Mala Rajya Laxmi Shah, Pushpendra Singh Chandel

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS

## LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 2594 TO BE ANSWERED ON 4 TH  AUGUST, 2021

## NETWORK SERVICES IN FAR FLUNG AREAS

## †2594. SHRIMATI MALA RAJYA LAXMI SHAH: SHRI KUNWAR PUSHPENDRA SINGH CHANDEL:

Will the Minister of COMMUNICATIONS be pleased to state:

(a) whether the mobile consumers in remote and small towns are not provided with uniform network facilities like the facilities available to mobile consumers in big cities while the former pay  the  same  convenience  fee  to  companies  like  rest  of  the  consumers  and  if  so,  the  details thereof;

(b) the  details  of  the  areas  having  constant  poor  mobile  network  services  in  the  country, State/UT-wise including Uttarakhand and Bundelkhand region; and

(c) the steps being taken by the Government  to  ensure  the  availability of  uniform communication facilities at the uniform tariff in the country?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER OF STATE FOR COMMUNICATIONS (SHRI DEVUSINH CHAUHAN)

(a) to (c)    The mobile consumers in remote and small towns are provided with uniform network facilities like the facilities available to mobile consumers in big cities. As per the Notice Inviting Application  (NIA)  for  auction  of  spectrum  and  license  given  to  Telecom  Service  Providers (TSPs),  TSPs  are  required  to  fulfill  minimum  rollout  obligations  which  include  coverage  of certain  percentage  of  District  Headquarters,  Block  Headquarters  and  rural  SDCAs  (Short Distance Charging Areas).

However, Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on the basis of a survey carried out in  2020,  has  estimated  that  around  5,72,551  out  of  5,97,618  inhabited  census  villages  of  the country  already  have  mobile  coverage  while  25,067  inhabited  villages  do  not  have  mobile coverage.  The  Government  is  already  addressing  this  issue  of  mobile  coverage  in  uncovered villages in the country in a phased manner.

DoT has taken several policy initiatives to facilitate infrastructure growth for delivery of quality services. These include permitting trading/sharing/ liberalisation of spectrum, permitting passive  &  active  infrastructure  sharing,  notification  of  Right  of  Way  Rules  2016  etc.  Nearly 16.14 lakh additional Base Transceiver Stations (BTSs) for 2G/3G/4G-LTE services have been added by TSPs during the period from March, 2014 (6.49 lakh BTS) to 27 th July 2021 (22.64 lakh BTS) across the country.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has been monitoring the performance of Telecom  Service  Providers  (TSPs)  against  the  benchmarks  for  various  Quality  of  Service parameters laid down by TRAI by way of Quality of Service regulations issued from time to time, through Quarterly Performance Monitoring Reports (PMRs). The performance is assessed for  a  Licence  Service  Area  (LSA)  as  a  whole.  Hence,  Separate  information  on  Quality  of Services in a state or union territory or district  is  not  available.  Benchmarks  for  the  network related  parameters  for  the  wireless  services  are  same  for  all  the  LSAs  including  remote  and small towns.

As per PMR for Cellular Mobile Telephone Services for the quarter ending December 2020 and quarter ending March 2021 of TRAI, all TSPs except M/s BSNL in one LSA (West Bengal) and M/s VIL in one LSA (Jammu & Kashmir) are complying to both Drop Call Rate (DCR) Spatial distribution measure (benchmark ≤ 2%) &  DCR  Temporal  distribution measure (benchmark ≤ 3%) benchmarks.

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