India's Reliance communication has big rural expansion plans

Reliance Communications (Rcom) will set up over 8,900 base terminal stations, which will provide telecom services to over two lakh villages, in the next one year under the Universal Service Obligation (USO) programme. The project comprises of commissioning 8982 base terminal stations, which will provide telecom services in 2,34,000 villages, which do not have any telecom connectivity at present. The announcement of the 'World's Largest and Fastest Rural Infrastructure' project comes a day after signing of MoU for USO programme with the Department of Telecommunication (DoT). The company aims to launch the telecom services within two months, after provisioning of passive infrastructure in these locations. It has also formed a special task force for the National Rural Rollout. The National Rural Marketing Team would be responsible for the completing this task. Last year, RCom had established its telecom network in over 40,000 villages under the USO fund and added close to 7.5 lakh new subscribers in these areas. The company also plans to enhance its network coverage to 25,000 towns and 4.5 lakh villages by March 2008 and has earmarked a capex of 2.5 billion dollars (Rs 11,000 crore) for its expansion plans during this fiscal.