Universal Service Obligation - an Obligation Yet to Be Obliged in India

Universal Service Obligation : An obligation yet to be obliged in India.

A critical element of most national telecom policy objectives is advancing universal service. Universal Service Obligation is necessary from a social point of view to ensure that there is a balanced growth in the economic and social well-being of the masses. ITU considers universal service provision as purely for the purpose of making available telecommunication services of specified quality, and in light of the specific national conditions, at an affordable price to that minority of potential users who do not have the service and for whom not having access to the service would constitute a social or economic disadvantage.

What constitutes basic services varies from country to country depending on the economic conditions, telecom penetration etc. For example, in many developed countries (for example, USA, Canada, UK), USO not only includes access to a PSTN, but also to directory services, selective outgoing call barring to premium service, emergency services and installation of payphones. In these countries, increasingly, USO also includes Internet access to public schools and libraries at discounted prices. In developing countries, the focus is on availability of at least a common telephone in rural areas. The emergence of Internet has led developing countries to incorporate access to it as a part of their USO. In India, the National Telecom Policy 1999 laid down that by 2002 all villages would be provided with a telephone and all exchanges with reliable media.

Implementation status of USO

Rural Telecom Services in India

As in many developing countries, India has poor telecom coverage in rural areas. The Govt.'s proposal in the eighth five year plan to provide 1 VPT (Village Panchayat Telephone) for every 100 households scheme was a failure since more than 50% of the installed phones did not work, large numbers did not have long distance calling and since there was no commercial incentives for villagers to ensure its working, several VPTs were disconnected due to non-payment. While the availability of VPTs was poor, there was significant growth in rural services provided to individuals.

According to DoT there are still 62,443 villages & many more in general to be covered under this obligation scheme which has proved to be highly successful in the different parts of the world. In addition to the basic telecommunication amenities the government is also planning to deploy direct exchange lines (DELs), infrastructure for mobile services & rural broadband. Hence there is a huge scope for the government to work in the untapped market to increase the rural tele-density by putting the USO on the service providers & infrastructure providers similar to what Telstra did for Australia.

The initial mechanism