The Telecom Sector has been undergoing continuous reforms and changes. To meet the aspirations of all stakeholders and for effective implementation of policies, the country has been divided geographically into 22 Licensed Service Areas(LSAs). AP LSA is one among the 22 LSAs in India (field level offices of Department of Telecom) having jurisdiction over the two Telugu speaking States of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana with headquarters at Hyderabad. LSA monitors the working of all Telecom & Internet service providers in the States as per licensing conditions and facilitates all the stakeholders to ensure that telecom services are made available in every nook & corner of the Licensed Area.

Telangana State has 33 Districts with 12,751 GPs and 3.5 Crore population while Andhra Pradesh has 26 Districts and 17,328 GPs with 4.95 Crore population as per 2011 census. As on January’2024 Telangana has 29,945 telecom towers and 1,06,743 BTSs and whereas, Andhra Pradesh has 27,657 towers and 1,02,882 BTSs. The total mobile customer base of both AP & Telangana states comes out to be  10,63,93,889 as on Feb’2024.

The Preamble of National Digital Communication Policy (NDCP -2018) inscribes “Digital infrastructure and services are increasingly emerging as key enablers and critical determinants of a country’s growth and well-being”. The foremost mission as well as the priority strategic objective of the Policy aims at “Provisioning of Broadband for All”. Further “Creating 4 million additional jobs in the Digital Communications sector” is among other important strategic objectives that are envisaged in the policy.

As part of objectives of NDCP-2018 With a view to ensure 4G mobile coverage to all uncovered villages, the 4G Saturation Project with 1390 sites covering 2392 villages in Andhra Pradesh and 270 sites covering 315 villages in Telangana is being closely monitored and facilitated by AP LSA.

AP LSA is also implementing LWE Phase-II Project (a continuation of Phase-I LWE project) to cover Left Wing Extremist affected areas with 4G Coverage to support the operations of Security Personnel. Accordingly, 200 sites were sanctioned in Andhra Pradesh to cover 346 villages and 16 sites were sanctioned in Telangana to cover 16 villages. The LWE Phase-I project had earlier covered about 235 sites in LWE affected areas of both states.

APLSA is monitoring “Aspirational Districts USOF Project” that covers 3 Districts of AP namely ASR, Kadapa and Vizianagaram districts. A total of 949 villages in above mentioned 3 Districts are planned to be covered by 621 Towers that are being executed under this project.  As on Feb’ 2024 a total of 313 towers are commissioned and working covering 578 villages out of 949.

I am hopeful that with the Implementation of 4G saturation project, LWE phase-II project and Aspirational Districts USOF Projects, all the remaining villages where at present broadband is not available will be covered with broadband services.