Universal Service Fund Action Plan Announced
USF (see my previous post) is a way to provide telecom services to under-served areas based on the pooled funding collected from telecom services. It is an important regulatory tool to reduce the digital divide. Last week Pakistan’s Minister for Information Technology provided details about a plan to provide telecommunication services to 6 under-served areas of the country. As the first rollout of its kind in Pakistan, it will be important to see if this USF implementation meets the needs of citizens in these areas and if the funds are used in a fair and just manner.
According to media reports, the six geographical areas marked out in the divisions of Malakand, Sukkar, Sibbi, Chaghi, DG Khan and Attockwere selected due to a large part of the population in these areas still in want of telecommunication services. The project will be launched within the next few weeks. Note that some of the areas above (such as Sibbi) were heavily damaged by the recent floods. Click on the image to see a larger map.
Excerpts from the report below - [I've taken out the praise for the government policies]:
The funds for the project would be provided by the multi-billion rupees Universal Service Fund instituted within the Ministry of Information Technology through annual contributions received from the telecom operators. The auctioning of the funds is already under way. These funds will be provided to existing telecom operators which would implement the project
The minister said the designated under-served areas to be covered under the first phase of the project also constituted approximately 3 per cent of total population and 23 per cent area of the country. He said the USF had a plan to achieve 85 per cent population coverage and increase rural tele-density to 5 per cent by the year 2010. He said another goal the USF had set out to achieve was a nationwide broadband penetration, by adding on 1.5 million new users by the year 2010.
The minister was speaking at the 5th meeting of the USF Board of Directors. The meeting was also attended by IT secretary Farrakh Qayyum, member telecom Nooruddin Baqai, Telenor Pakistan’s CEO Tore Johnson, WOL CEO Azfar Manzoor and USF CEO Parvez Iftikhar.
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fingers crossed - if it happen as planned; it would be a nice move and more cities needed to be added quickly.
[...] more background on USF plans in Pakistan, see this prior post. More from the paper: Telenor Pakistan won the final stage of technical and financial bidding for [...]
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fuck deeper…