The Quest for Universal Rural Telephone Services: Challenges And Choices

Abstract

This article attempts to give the reader a brief outline of the reasons behind the phenomenon whereby vast urban-rural access gaps in telecom connectivity (digital divide) continue to persist in spite of telecom reforms. This gap, known as the ‘Actual Access Gap’ is found world over, to a lesser or greater extent, depending on the level of a country’s overall economic development. In India, it is seen in the form of a wide and ever growing gap in urban-rural teledensity. The article briefly describes the various measures which have been adopted, world over in the past and which continue to be used, to address this connectivity gap. Supplementing market forces and encouraging private initiative through Universal Service Fund has been internationally acknowledged to be one of the most transparent and efficient methods of bridging the urban- rural access gap. This method has been discussed with special reference to the application and achievements of Universal Service Obligation (USO) policy in India. The article includes a first hand description of some of the field level problems encountered in implementation of the USO policy along with suggested remedial measures. Acknowledging that the present policy though sound, is inadequate to achieve the desired level of rural teledensity, various alternative measures to augment existing policy initiatives under USO have been analyzed with some suggestions.

Keywords: universal service, rural telephony, universal service fund