ISLAMABAD: Govt to extend communication services to remote areas
By Our Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD, Jan 25: The government is planning to launch a rural telephony service scheme to extend communication facilities to inaccessible and far-flung areas.
This was announced by Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunications Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari here on Saturday.
He said the scheme would help in narrowing the much talked about digital divide. The setting up of communication with remote areas in a relatively short time would help the law- enforcement agencies and defence department, he said.
The minister was speaking at the launching of the Distance Education Programme through Paksat-1, Pakistan’s first communications satellite, at a local hotel.
Talking about the Paksat-1, he said: “The satellite has placed a tremendous resource at our command, which should be utilized to benefit the citizens through services, learning and education.”
“The next challenge now is to put it to maximum use and coordinate frequencies with the neighbouring satellites,” he said.
The minister stressed the need for aggressive marketing support by a professional marketing establishment. He also called for focusing on the launching of Pakistan’s own satellite.
“We are fully determined and have the political will to accelerate the launch of our own satellite in the next three to five years under the auspices of Suparco,” Mr Leghari said.
“Let this be an occasion today to mark our determination for our future venture into space age,” he said. “The advantage of our own satellite was that we could offer more affordable rates and affordable education to tens of thousands of students, besides making wider use of this technology.”
“This satellite has a lot of capacity, but in reality, today, we will start using a small portion of its capacity due to technical constraints,” Mr Leghari said.
He said he would do his best for the well being of the people of Pakistan by exploiting all possible venues and applications where satellite could be utilized. These venues include provision of educational and telecommunication facilities to remote areas.
The real value of technology is when all the citizens can reap its benefits, he said, adding that “under our e-government programme, we are determined to improve provision of services to citizens and increase efficiency of governance”.
A Pakistan government portal has already been launched where citizens can get information about the government and download various forms.
Earlier, Prof (Dr) Attaur Rehman, chairman of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), described the event as a historic one. He said the satellite had cost $4.5 million, whereas the original cost of a similar 15-year-life satellite was $250 million.
He said the satellite would mainly be used for education, and free lectures would be provided to the local universities from world renowned universities like Stanford and MIT.
The chairman said Pakistan was way ahead in this field as it would take Indians another two-and-a-half-years to launch a similar satellite. He said the satellite could provide 250 television channels in addition to 38,000 voice circuits.
