Telecos seem to be making the best of what they can in such times where internet use all across the country is growing at such an alarming rate. Recently Reliance Communications proclaimed major strategic initiatives aimed at growing the mobile telecom and Internet penetration in rural India.
According to a statement issued from RCOM, its rural enabler blueprint is based on a three-pronged strategy. “Drive internet penetration across rural and sub-urban terrain, thrust on high impact machine-to-machine solutions, and provide value-added services specific to rural needs under Grameen VAS initiative across 500,000 villages,” said the release.
The three new initiatives targeted at increasing mobile telecom and internet penetration across rural India, including a high-speed wireless internet service are -
- BharatNet plan is a variant of Reliance NetConnect high-speed wireless internet service, specifically designed for the rural and sub-urban markets. It offers speeds of approximately 153 Kbps, which is 4 to 8 times the current dial-up speed of the wire-line services.
- Grameen VAS
- M2M (machine to machine) solutions.
RCom has reserved Rs. 1000 crore per year for its rural uprising. WATBlog has covered earlier about such initiatives taken by other companies such as the e-Choupal programme introduced by ITC. And, why not? ”The Indian telecom wireless rural subscriber base is now over 125 million. The next wave of telecom growth is emerging from rural India,” RCom president (wireless) S P Shukla said. What remains to be seen now is if other players enter a similar arena with innovation and accountability. Secondly, how interesting their initiatives appear.
