Under an attempt to bridge the digital divide by increasing telephony penetration, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) – the telecom licencor in the country - will waive the licence fee levied on rural landline telephones. The move, however, result in losses of Rs 200 crore per year to the licencor.
India's rural teledensity stood at a meagre 8 per cent as on December 31, 2007, compared with the 24 per cent teledensity in the country.
The decision to not to levy licence fee for rural landline was taken at a recent Telecom Commission (TC) meeting, a wing of DoT.
The TC has also decided to reduce the levy towards Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF).
The DoT has decided to reduce the USOF charges to 3 per cent from the present 5 per cent of Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) of service providers who have covered over 95 per cent of the rural areas.
The USOF has been set up to create infrastructure support in rural and remote areas for providing telecommunications service to people at affordable and reasonable prices.
These decisions are in line with the government's policy of promoting rural telephony and accessibility of telephone in remote areas. The aim is to achieve rural tele-density of 25 per cent by means of 200 million rural connections by the end Eleventh Five Year Plan.
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