Rs 10,700 cr telecom projects for better N-E connectivity: Centre

"Telecom connectivity is a big problem in North East.

The Central government had identified various solutions, but due to various reasons these could not be completed. Now, the Department of Telecom has initiated projects worth Rs 10,700 crore to complete these by December 2018," Sinha said at a press conference here.

This amount, which is about 1/8th of the total investment planned by the DoT, is likely to be enhanced to Rs 15,000 crore for North East, the minister said.

"As part of the initiatives, we are rolling out a Comprehensive Telecom Development Project at an estimated cost of Rs 5,336.31 crore," he said.

"In 8,621 villages and along the national highway in the North East, 6,673 mobile towers will be set up to provide connectivity and an MoU was signed between BSNL and USO Fund for this purpose," Sinha said.

Out of these, 2,817 mobile towers will be set up by BSNL in Arunachal Pradesh and two districts of Assam, while the work of erecting 2,004 towers in six states has been initiated by Bharti Airtel in December 2017 and will be completed in 18 months, he added.

Attending a two-day conference on implementation of BharatNet and other major projects in North East, the telecom minister dedicated the Asthamangal Project by BSNL to the nation, especially to the citizens of the region.

Under this project, alternate bandwidth of 810 Gbps at a cost of about Rs 35 crore has been provided by BSNL using connectivity through Optical Power Ground Wire (OPGW) of Power Grid Corporation of India (PGCIL) for all state headquarters and other important locations of NE region.