The state owned teleco major BSNL has covered all DHQ and 33620 cities/towns with GSM based cellular services as on July 31, 2011, minister of State for Communications and Information Technology Milind Deora informed Rajya Sabha on Friday.

 He said that the shared mobile infrastructure scheme has been launched by Universal Service Obligation Fund (USO Fund) to provided subsidy support for setting up and managing 7353 number infrastructure sites/towers (revised from 7871) in 500 districts spread over 27 States. This is meant for mobile services in the specified rural and remote areas, where there was no existing fixed wireless or mobile coverage.

Villages or cluster of villages having population of 2000 or more and not having mobile coverage were taken into consideration for installation of the tower under this scheme including hilly, tribal and naxal affected areas. Infrastructure providers have reported that 7289 towers i.e. about 99.13 per cent have been set up as on 31.7.2011 under this scheme.