ADB Helps India Expand Mobile Phone Coverage to Rural Areas
MANILA, PHILIPPINES - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is financing a project in India that will help expand mobile phone coverage, predominantly in rural areas, by installing 17,100 additional telecommunications towers. Under the project, ADB will provide a loan of up to $150 million to GTL Infrastructure Ltd. (GIL), a leading telecommunication infrastructure provider in India. GIL is currently implementing Phase I of its rollout plan to set up 6,600 towers throughout the country. The ADB-funded project is Phase II of GIL’s tower rollout plan. While ADB has provided financing directly to telecommunication operators to facilitate the rollout of mobile services in several countries, this is ADB’s first financing to a telecommunication infrastructure provider. The additional towers will be leased to various mobile operators on a shared basis. Installation is expected to be predominantly in rural and semi-rural areas and the project is expected to be completed by March 2011. “We believe that the project will enable mobile operators to accelerate coverage into remote and sparsely populated areas, leading to rural development and pro-poor economic growth,” said Shantanu Chakraborty, Investment Specialist of ADB’s Private Sector Operations Department. Despite the recent growth in the Indian telecommunication sector, the country continues to suffer from a critical lack of communication infrastructure in its rural areas. Of around 600,000 villages in the country, about 7% do not even have landline phone connections. The coverage in rural India remains very poor with only about half the towns and one sixth of the villages covered so far. As of the end of 2007, the total subscriber base including landline and mobile services in the country stood around 273 million, registering an annual growth of 44%. The Government has established a goal of 500 million telephone subscribers by December 2010. About ADB | 
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