Goemkarponnd desk
PANAJI: As students travel kilometres away to get the network coverage for the online classes, it has now come to the fore that around 25 villages in the State where there is no network connectivity forget broadband.
With COVID19 cases continuing to lock the schools and colleges, there has been a demand for internet connectivity for online classes.
An independent survey conducted by an internet provider says that there 25 black spots in Goa.
Goa has nearly 2044 mobile towers (See table) with over 25 lakhs wireless subscribers in Goa (See Box) against 1 million.
Goa is among the highest teledensity state in the country. Most of the subscribers have more than one connection, primarily due to the unavailability of the particular network either at home or at their workplaces.
Educational Institutes are keen to commence the academic year and has also sought information from different panchayats on internet connectivity in other parts of Goa.
“A paradigm shift in consumer behaviour is underway in the wake of the lockdown and social distancing, which discourages person-to-person contact. Which is leading to a higher dependency on digital tools such as videoconferencing, collaborativ
e applications, which surging demand for telecom services,” said Cell Operators Associations of India (COAI) Officials.
Officials further said that there had been an increase of around 12-15 per cent in data traffic during the first and second lockdown.
“More people are working from home than ever before, and surge in online content consumption, which has created pressure on the existing infrastructure,” added officials.
Different analyses reports suggest that business conferencing apps were downloaded 62million times as more employees transitioned to working from home.
“Amidst Covid lockdown, more and more people are latching the network that has resulted into congestion on the existing network,” said Goa Base Network Head of Leading Telecom Service Provider.
He said that nearly 350 TB of data was consumed from a single operator that is increased by almost 412 TB during lockdown before lockdown.
Though subscribers are multiplying, the designed capacity of existing infrastructure is not growing on par with subscribers pace due to different reasons.
“Exiting network designed capacity of telecom service providers needs to enhance with the surge in usage,” he added.
More than 25 villages in Goa have no single telecom operator available that attributes these areas into the total dark spot. (See the tentative list). It would be an injustice to the student from these villages if the e-learning is denied to them due to unavailability of the network,” he said.
Hurdle In Rolling Telecom Infrastructure…
As per last year’s joint representation made by the Cell Operators Association of India (COAI) and Tower and Infrastructure Providers Association (TAIPA) to the Chief Secretary of Goa, it has requested the Govt of Goa to formulate a uniform telecom infrastructure policy for the State of Goa aligned with Indian Telegraph Right of Way Rules.
The joint representation submitted by COAI Director General Rajan S Mathews and Director General of TAIPA Tilak Raj Dua has mentioned that many restrictive conditions impede the tower rollout.
“There has been an incident where our vendors have been manhandled at different locations by elected village panchayat representatives,” said an official from Telecom Infrastructure Provider.
During the 2016 BRICS Summit in Goa, the official recalled that his company was asked to create necessary infrastructures in South Goa to ensure that the installed infra would cater to the local needs after BRICS summit.
“But we were forced to dismantle created infrastructures due to heavy resistance from local village panchayats,” said the official.
Goa was among the first State in the country to roll out the first triple play citizen-centric network, the Goa Broadband Network (GBBN) project from then Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, in December 2007.
The GBBN aimed to extend voice, data, and video services to domestic households and the much-required backbone for e-Governance in the State, connecting 225 government departments 180 village panchayats with point-to-point connectivity.
The entire network infrastructure built on a PPP model with United Telecom Limited (UTL), and UTL was mandated to upgrade the infrastructure.
However, over time, poor customers’ service and failure to upgrade existing infrastructure from GBBN have left hundreds of unsatisfied customers across Goa.
