The World Bank has given about US$424 million to Eastern and Southern African countries for a program designed to improve regional communication infrastructure and increase the deployment of e-government.
India will connect 5000 blocks in the country with wireless broadband, once the spectrum is allocated later this year, announced Department of Telecommunications (DOT) , Government of India. The project will be undertaken along with the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF). The plan aims to provide connectivity to villages coming within a radius of 10 Kms of the Taluka/Block headquarters.
Though India is considered to be a major IT destination, it would not be wrong to state that most of the IT boom or development has been confined to the major cities of Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Pune.
“There are six lakh villages in India and a vast number of them were uncovered with telecom services. USO Fund provides support for setting up rural telephony in these uncovered villages”, says Ajay Bhattacharya, Administrator, Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund, Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Government of India to egov magazine
The Government of India will soon invite tenders from telecom service providers to set up rural networks for which subsidy would be provided from the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund. Around INR 99 billion fund is lying with the centre.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam limited (BSNL) has received an approval from the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) to release a tender for Wi Max services, a fourth generation(4G) technology in India.
The South Africa Government has been slowly increasing the use of broadband and wireless technologies.
The Prime Minister of Bernama has launched a national ICT project Managed Portal Services (MPS), which is designed to drive greater ICT-usage among the people.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has urged the Indian Government to take the urgent policy measures to boost broadband growth in the country and ask BSNL and MTNL to adopt a a franchisee model where by local players can use their copper lines to offer high speed Internet services.
The Indian Defence force is ready to vacate 42.5 Mhz spectrum, including the 3G spectrum by September, 2007.
