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Continuing his perform or perish drive and zero tolerance for corruption, telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has approved force retirement for 10 senior DoT officials, including a joint secretary, an official source said on Saturday. This is the first time employees in the Department of Telecom have been given forced retirement under section 56 (J) under Pension Rule 48 of CCS (Pension) Rules, 1972. "Telecom minister has approved forced retirement for 10 senior DoT officials for doubtful integrity and the government's zero tolerance for corruption. Out of 10, nine officials were working at director level and one official is of joint secretary rank," the source said. The move from the minister comes a day before the eve of "Good Governance Day" celebrated by the government every year. In September, a senior BSNL official, who was caught napping in Vaishnaw's meeting after the cabinet cleared a Rs 1.64 lakh-crore package for the public sector enterprise, was given voluntary retirement
The government is working to bring down the cost of telecom operations to attract more investments in the sector, a top official said on Friday. While speaking at the CII Telecom Summit, telecom secretary K Rajaraman said the cost of maintaining optic fibre network is very forbidding. "(If) we are able to bring down the cost of operations for the telecom network, I am sure that more investment will come. We will be working on that. A lot of policy measures are underway," he said. Rajaraman said the government is running a pilot of 'Call before you dig' application in some states to avoid damages to telecom infrastructure while digging roads and doing other infrastructure-related works. He said that a good digital connectivity cannot rest on mobile service only and complimentary connectivity through fibre to support mobile services is very important. "In urban areas, optical fibre is available. In rural areas, BharatNet has enabled us to reach 1.89 lakh villages so far. Target is
Telecom operators are installing on an average 2,500 base stations per week for providing 5G services in the country, Union minister Devusinh Chauhan said on Friday. The Minister of State for Communications told Rajya Sabha that 20,980 mobile base stations were installed as of November 26. Out of them, Reliance Jio and Airtel have installed 17,687 and 3,293 base stations, respectively. "Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) have started providing 5G services in the country from October 1, 2022 onwards. As on November 26... 20,980 base stations have been installed in 14 states and union territories. On an average, TSPs are installing approximately 2,500 base stations per week," Chauhan said in a written reply. He said telecom operators have reported that they are presently providing 5G services to their subscribers, having 5G enabled devices, at no extra cost. "Presently, separate counts of 5G users are not being maintained by TSPs". In response to a question on 5G services of BSNL and