Over 4000 mobile towers to be installed in Odisha: Ashwini Vaishnaw

Bhubaneswar: Over 4,000 mobile towers to be installed in various places across Odisha. Union Minister of Railways, Communications and Electronics and Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw informed this on Sunday.

In a press briefing, Vaishnaw stated that about 6,000 villages in Odisha are out of mobile connectivity due to lack of mobile towers. In order to spread telecom and internet network to all the villages in the state, his ministry has identified around 3,933 sites where mobile towers will be installed, he added.

On February 4, the Ministry of Communications stated in the Lok Sabha that around 25,067 villages across the country lack mobile and internet connectivity of which Odisha has the highest number of villages in the country without mobile connectivity. As per the report 6,099  villages in Odisha lack mobile and internet connectivity.

Odisha is followed by Madhya Pradesh (2,612), Maharashtra (2,328) and Arunachal Pradesh (2,223), Chhattisgarh (1,847), Andhra Pradesh (1,787), Meghalaya (1,674) and Jharkhand (1,144) villages.

In November last year, the Centre approved a plan to provide 4G mobile services in 7,287 villages in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Odisha at a cost of Rs 6,466 crore.

Under the scheme about 3,933 uncovered villages in Odisha to be provided with high-speed mobile and internet connectivity. The villages in 10 districts– Kandhamal, Rayagada, Nabarangpur, Nuapada, Kalahandi, Gajapati, Koraput, Malkangiri, Balangir and Dhenkanal were included.