Spotlight

New Delhi, 2 June 2015

BSNL To Offer Free National Roaming

New Delhi, 2 June 2015, (INFA): Come June 15, BSNL will offer free national roaming. Guess it’s yet another bait by the Ministry of Communications to increase its kitty of users and set its house in order. Last month it started offering free calls from landlines to any network in the night. Likewise, MTNL too offers free local calls from landline to any network in Delhi and Mumbai from 9 p.m to 7 pm. Both the national providers claim to have reversed the negative trend of previous years by adding 47 lakh and 2.11 lakh active subscribers respectively in year 2014-15.

Presenting his Ministry of IT and Communication’s report card since taking over a year ago,  at a press conference Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad too like his colleague Home Minister Rajnath Singh chose to start by taking at dig at the UPA-II government, without naming it. “When I took over good governance had become a casualty and Sanchar Bhavan was in the news for the wrong reasons,” he stated. However, all that has changed and there was self kudos: “we have been able to generate hope and confidence... today lobbyists and middlemen have no say. Decisions are taken in a transparent manner.”

Releasing three colourful booklets on ‘One year of activities and Achievements’ in different sizes, with similar messages, the his tone was upbeat with the strides made in all fields under his stewardship, be it national (100 crore landline connections) and rural ( from 4.5% to 48.9 %) tele-density,  52% growth in broadband subscribers in 10 months, highest inflow in FDI, spectrum auctions of Rs 1,09, 874 crore, post offices (27,215) networked into one national unit, increase in  ATMs in POs from 4 to 115, parcel revenues growth of 37 %, increasing electronic manufacturing clusters from 8 in 2013-14 to 21 in 2014-15 et al.

At the same time, he did reach out to the States for their assistance in making Digital India a reality and wanted more State governments’ commitment to the laying of optical fibre network to reach out to the gram panchayat level. So far eight States have come on board. This apart, the Ministry has committed itself to implement a comprehensive telecom department plan for the north-eastern region at an estimated cost of Rs 5,334.18 crore. The project envisages mobile coverage to 8,621 identified uncovered villages installation of 321 mobile tower sites along national highways and strengthening of transmission network by linking the 8 state capitals. Will there be “achche din” for the North-East as well as left wing Extremists affected areas? 

The Ministry is going all to make Prime Minister Modi’s Digital India programme a reality. The programme aimed at bridging the digital divide between urban and rural India, has a lot of its success shouldering on the IT Ministry. Towards that aim of digital empowerment of citizens, various initiatives have been launched, said Prasad. These include: MyGov—as a platform for citizen engagement in governance, where they participate in policy and execution through”discuss”, “Do” and “disseminate approach”. Then there is Digital Locker System, which enables citizens to securely store and share their documents with service providers, who can directly access them directly.

Additionally, there is national scholarship portal where students can apply directly to centrally funded schemes; e-hospital, to facilitate patients to take online OPD appointments in Government hospitals and not wait for days at these hospitals and e-basta to make school books accessible in digital forms of e-books to be read on tablets and laptops. “Whatever is doable we are doing and what is not doable we have not been doing,” is how best Prasad provided his Ministries leeway for any complaints. ----INFA

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