Shri Sachin Pilot, Minister of State, Communication & Information Technology held a meeting yesterday at the I & PR Conference Hall with senior BSNL officials(Chief General Managers and General Managers) of the North-East to review Telecom Infrastructure in the North-East. He was accompanied by senior officers from the BSNL Corporate Office, New Delhi. The meeting reviewed the existing telecom infrastructure in the North East and discussed measures to augment existing infrastructure and ways to better the different services provided by BSNL.

Shri Sachin Pilot said that the meeting was held to understand in detail the problems faced by BSNL in the North East and suggest ways to improve services, especially mobile and internet services in the region. Saying that the topography of the region brings forth operational and logistical challenges in providing services, but it was not impossible to improve the services he added.  He urged the BSNL officials to be creative in providing solutions and also stressed the need to think out of the box.

The Minister said that he would take up the matter of leasing lines from PGDCIL to augment cellular services in the region with the Ministry of Power and also the matter of providing roaming facility to prepaid customers of BSNL  with the Home Ministry.  Further he added that BSNL Corporate Office was always ready to provide any kind of support to better services in the region. He asked BSNL oficials of Aizawl to finish work on 5 remaining USOF Towers in Mizoram as soon as possible.

BSNL has three Circles - Assam Circle, North East I Circle (Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura) and North East II Circle (Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland) in the region. The North East region as whole has 1119 Telephone Exchanges; wired line capacity of 12,31,260, of which 6,43,587 are working connections; WLL capacity  of 4,00,750, of which 2,48,337 are working lines ; Mobile capacity of 22,52,293  of which 21,46,170 are working connections ; Broadband capacity of 1,70,476 of which   84,643 are working connections. There are 2,36,268 Internet connections and 14,424 km of  Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) network  in the region.  

Mizoram has 67 Telephone Exchange; wired line capacity of 74,400 out of which 55,136 are working lines; WLL capacityof  24,000 out of which  15,351 are working connections; Mobile capacity  of 95,427 out of which 92,876  are working connections; Broadband capacity of 7234 out of which   4211 are working Broadband connections.In addition there are 32,586 Internet connections and 578 km of Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) network in the state.