|
|
According to officials from BSNL, the people of northeast India will continue to enjoy the prepaid mobile telephone facility. The home ministry had restricted the use of prepaid connections in Jammu & Kashmir as well as north-eastern Indian states citing "serious security concerns”.
"The union home ministry has asked Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and the state governments of the northeastern states to send reports on the use or misuse of pre-paid mobile services by the militants or any unauthorised elements," said BSNL general manager (operations) Deb Kumar Chakraborty.
"We do not have specific reports that pre-paid cell phone connections are being misused by any elements in the region. However, we are maintaining a close watch on this," he told.
The licenses of the mobile operators for providing prepaid connections were renewed in Feb 2009 by the central government.
The prepaid connections were banned by the central government after they received reports from security personnel saying that militants were using such connections for communication purposes as well as for launching attacks.
BSNL has plans for improving the infrastructure as well as setting up more mobile phone towers in the borders of the northeast states.
BSNL chief general manager Vinod Kumar told newsmen in Shillong: "Earlier there was a restriction by the union home ministry to set up towers within 10 km of the international border. Now the restriction has been reduced to only 500 metres."
In the border areas, some people use the services of Bangla Grameen Mobile Company Ltd because of the poor service of BSNL.
BSNL has recently launched 3G standards services defined by the International Telecommunication Union in Guwahati (Assam), Gangtok (Sikkim), Agartala (Tripura) and Shillong (Meghalaya). Along with BSNL, other private telecom service providers also operate in Northeast India in states whose the borders are shared by China, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Bhutan.
