Rural Northeast to get better phone coverage by next year

Telecom facilities in the Northeast is set to get a major boost with the Union Ministry of Communications and Information Technology announcing that it will add a total of 9,129 villages across all the eight Northeastern states to its coverage map by June 2008. In a bid to work towards its target of a half a billion connections by 2010, out of which one-fifth is to be in the rural areas, the government has said it has set up 81 new telecom clusters in backward areas. Each of the Northeast states has one cluster each under this scheme.

Manipur, where private mobile phone companies made an entry only in 2006—a decade after they began services in the Indian market—will get 95 towers across all nine districts, covering 695 villages. Assam and Meghalaya will have 3,118 and 2,803 villages covered, while Arunachal Pradesh will have 62 towers covering 936 villages. Four hundred and seventy four villages in Nagaland, 361 in Mizoram, 87 in Sikkim and 655 villages in Tripura will also benefit from the extension programme by June 2008. The ministry will support setting up and managing infrastructure sites for providing mobile phone services.