July 3, 2002	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 21,1423

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ISLAMABAD, July 2: The government has decided to invite private sector investment in the Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) project after spending an amount of Rs647 million out of the approved cost of Rs1.05 billion.

The project was approved earlier in the year by the Executive Committee for National Economic Council (Ecnec) for providing telecommunication facilities through the VSAT to the remote and far-flung areas of Balochistan, Sindh, the NWFP and Punjab.

Science and Technology Minister Dr Atta-ur-Rehman, at a press conference immediately after the approval of the project in February had said that the remote villages which, otherwise, could not be linked to the main cities even in 50 years would now be linked within six months.

However, policy change at the top level without the knowledge of the minister delayed the project from being launched in the stipulated timeframe, sources said.

In reply to a question if the project had now been shelved by the government, Dr Atta told Dawn that it had now been decided to seek private sector investment in the project.

The project is intricately linked to the various e-governance projects initiated by the government.

The private sector would be charging market rates for the services provided through VSAT once the project was privatized, sources in the National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) said.

The government will be calling Expression of Interest for the VSAT project in the next couple of days.

NTC sources said that giving away the project to the private sector would have serious implications for various linkages of the VSAT project to the defence services and the ministry of interior.

The National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) could have recovered the cost of investments in a few years as there were more than 150 ready customers willing to buy the linkages and scope of services available through VSAT, sources said.

The National Telecommunication Corporation is headed by Air Vice Marshal Azhar Maud. Documents of the finance ministry obtained by Dawn show that an expenditure of Rs647 million was incurred on the project by June 2002.

The ministry of science and technology had proposed an allocation of Rs411 million in the PSDP 2002-03 but it was not done, documents show.

The scope of the project covered provision of telephone connectivity to 300 remote sites of the country through Wireless Local Loop System where the normal PTCL connections cannot be provided.

Due to diversity of the population and hostile terrain in certain areas of the country where the financial condition of the people is below the poverty level, the telecommunication companies are reluctant to penetrate due to obvious reasons of lower revenue earning in the face of heavy investment.

For such difficult terrain and sparsely populated areas Very Small Aperture Terminal-based rural telephone system has internationally been considered as optimised solution using existing satellites both for voice and data applications.