Centre assures special package to Arunachal for telecom

The Centre has assured Arunachal Pradesh for a special package to develop the telecommunication system in the state.
The assurance came from Union Department of Telecom (DoT) Secretary J S Deepak when the state Chief Secretary Shakuntala Doley Gamlin made the proposal, among others, during the two days meeting of DoT at Guwahati, which concluded yesterday, an official release informed said here today.
Deepak said that the Union Ministry of Telecommunication would set up around 6,000 towers across North East under the comprehensive telecom development plant for North East India.
The project would connect more than 8,000 villages across the region in next two years.

BSNL would do this work in Arunachal Pradesh, he said.
The Union secretary further assured to make more bandwidth available, wherever the VSATs are being installed, especially in district headquarters besides, improved connectivity through VSAT till optical fibres are laid on an interim basis and connectivity through OFC possible within a period of 2 years.

During the meeting the chief secretary apprised the department of the need to expand telecommunications in the strategically located state, mainly in view of GST implementation, demonetisation, educational purposes, promotion of tourism sector.
"The state government is looking to fulfill the vision of the Digital India and implement Go cashless, Go Digital policy, where telecommunication plays a vital role," Gamlin said.

She expressed concern over slow pace of works by the executing agencies in various projects and emphasized that Railtel and BSNL should carry out their work on war footing to complete their projects in a time bound manner so that implementation of GST and other e-Governance projects could be rolled out on time.
Gamlin further proposed to bring internet to the state expeditiously, which included among others a waive in spectrum charges for 5 years, dedicated office, speedy procurement of microwave emitters, review of entire network to increase reliability, incentives to private operators to invest and scale up operations in the state, optical connectivity by March 18, besides a VSAT hub at Itanagar.