Kolkata : Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd aims to connect all remote villages in West Bengal to the plain old telephone system (POTS) within the next one-and-a-half years, using the wireless in local loop (WLL) technology.An official of BSNL's West Bengal Telecom Circle said the service would start from May this year and cover all the villages by March 2002.The use of WLL, which uses wireless connections for the final link between the telephone exchange and subscriber, will enable the government to implement one of the promises made in the National Telecom Policy of 1999.While LG-Escort will supply the hardware, the base station controllers and base stations, the Centre for Development of Telematics has developed the switching system on a V5.2 protocol.
At present, out of 38,000 villages in the State, around 17,000 do not have POTS. Among the districts, Midnapore has the largest number of villages with no POTS connection.
"To connect different sparsely populated and remotely connected regions, the WLL system using Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) is the most cost-effective solution. Our aim is to give around 500 connections corresponding to each base station," said Mr Chinmay Mitra, general manager of the Task Force.
He said growth rate of new connections has improved considerably over the last few years. "The growth rate before the year 1997 was below 15 per cent. After 1997, the average growth has been over 33 per cent.
BSNL will have 11 base controller stations and 70 base stations in the state and hopes to add at least 20,000 connections, at a hardware cost of Rs 21,000 per line.
Copyright © 2001 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
