Under the National Telecom Policy (NTP) of 1994, the government has decided to provide a VPT in every village. There are about 6.5 lakh villages in the country. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has so far provided VPTs in about 3.5 lakh villages which leaves another three lakh villages yet to be covered. The NTP had envisaged that all villages would be covered by end of the Eighth Five Year Plan which was highly ambitious. Thetarget date has now been shifted to a more manageable date in 2002.

There is debate on the technology best suited to provide VPTs. The honest answer is that none of the technologies can meet the demands of all the sites in a cost-effective manner. While one technology may be more suited for some sites, there may be a better technology suitable for another set of sites.

The parameters which influence the choice of technology include remoteness from nearest switching centre; geographical location; and the anticipated amount of traffic. The ICICI, based on their cost studies, concluded that generally satellite-based systems are more cost effective for VPT sites located more than 25 km away from the switching centre.

To have cost-effective technology, it would be prudent to categorise VPT sites in few broad categories. The first category could include places located within 25 km from the nearest switching centre which could be best covered through fixed terrestrial lines or wireless in local loop (WLL) orcellular systems. The villages surrounding the cities having cellular base stations and falling under cellular coverage zone can be ideally covered by cellular system. This has been done quite successfully in Bangladesh and some other countries. It is characterised by very low capital and operating cost.

Places which are located far away (more than 25 km) from switching centres where satellite-based systems would provide more cost-effective solution could fall in the second category.

The third category could include areas with difficult terrain -- like North-East or Jammu and Kashmir -- where building up of terrestrial system would be very cost prohibitive and WLL will not be technically viable because of lack of line of site etc. Such areas again could well be covered by the satellite-based system.

For areas with low anticipated traffic volumes (below an hour per day), less capital-intensive technologies, such as Inmarsat Large Antenna Mini-M, may be called for. On the other hand, the sites with highanticipated traffic volumes would be best covered by systems like VSATs, which require heavy investment, but lesser operating cost.Therefore, a combination of various telecom technologies, if chosen properly, can provide an optimal solution in providing cost-effective and efficient telecommunication. Such technologies can be in synergy and supplement each other rather than compete with each other.

The author is Regional Director (Central and Eastern Asia), Inmarsat