100 BSNL towers to come up in State

BHUBANESWAR: With an aim to strengthen mobile network in the State, Union Minister of State for Communications and Railways Manoj Sinha on Monday announced setting up of 100 more Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL)’s mobile towers in Odisha this year. Most of these towers will be installed in rural areas.

Sinha, in the presence of Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, dedicated 280 Rural WiFi hotspots installed by BSNL. “It will help the landline customers to get high speed internet through broadband connection, both in cable network as well as optical fibre network,” Sinha said.

He also dedicated 400 2G network towers and 480 3G network towers to provide seamless connectivity for voice and data in Odisha.Besides, he launched Wi-Fi Choupal project for 100 gram panchayats of Jagatsinghpur district, Comprehensive Pearl Archive Network for 708 sites and Multi-Protocol Lable Switching Transport based Packet Aggregation Network (MNH-PAN) of BSNL in the State. The MNH-PAN is the next generation transport protocol for information flow, the Minister said. He also unveiled some CSR related projects for Deogarh.

The Telecome Minister also handed over Sanitary Napkin Manufacturing machines donated by Central Government PSUs like Nalco, NTPC and Oil Companies to Common Service Centre (CSC).During the event, MoUs were signed between Oil Companies - IOCL, HPCL and BPCL - and CSCs to set up LPG distribution sub-stations and provide LPG services at 2000 CSCs across Odisha.

Union Minister for Petroleum Dharmendra Pradhan said the LPG service at CSCs will hugely help LPG customers in rural areas of the State. He informed that currently Odisha has around 80 lakh LPG consumers, of which 40 lakh are beneficiaries of Ujjwala scheme.