Excelsior Correspondent
LEH, Oct 11: Stated that the digital communication in Ladakh should be upgraded most urgently, Advisor Ladakh, Umang Narula today asked the telecom operators to start rolling out 5G services in Ladakh by 2023.
Narula said this while chairing the 2nd State Broadband Committee (SBC) of the Union territory of Ladakh held at Civil Secretariat, Leh. He said that the identification of land and required paperwork for setting up additional towers should take place during the winter season so that work can start immediately in the next working season.
The Advisor exhorted that non-provision of telecom connectivity to villages is the most pressing issue in Ladakh. In far-flung areas, he urged the telecom operators to make internet connectivity a top priority in unreached areas.
In the meeting, ADG (Rural), Sachin Lamba apprised the participants that since the first SBC meeting, 62 villages of Ladakh have been provisioned under the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) scheme.
Further, he shared that a list of 330 villages/hamlets was provided by the Ladakh administration to DoT for the provisioning of mobile connectivity. “Out of these, 192 have been planned under the USOF scheme and the work has been awarded to BSNL while the remaining villages will be planned under phase II”, he added.
Principal Secretary of the IT Department, Sanjiv Khirwar asked the telecom operators to come up with a winter action plan to address the issues faced during the winter months.
CGM, BSNL, J&K Circle, Sanjiv Tyagi apprised the meeting that BSNL has been onboarded on PGCIL fiber to ensure redundancy in the BSNL network for the Ladakh region.
Senior DDG, J&K LSA, Sunita Chandra urged the telecom operators to ensure the maintenance of the existing infrastructure so that good quality of service and availability of the network is ensured to the public.
The meeting among others was attended by the Principal Secretary, Forest, Ecology, and Environment Department, Dr Pawan Kotwal; Commissioner/Secretary, PHE, A K Sahu; DDG (Rural), J&K LSA, Shiv Narain; Director (Rural-1), J&K LSA, Sanjay Kumar; Director (Rural-2), J&K LSA, Laxmi and AD (Rural), Vijay Kumar.
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