Reliance Jio has written to the Department of Telecommunications protesting against a tender that invites bids for building 2G and 4G towers, criticising the DOT's decision to use legacy technology in fresh telecom constructions. The letter was first reported by PTI. The tender Jio is referring to, is to build 2G and 4G towers along highways and parts of the islands that haven't been covered by any telecom infrastructure at all. Telecom coverage in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands is sparse, and BSNL accounts for most of the wireless coverage. Read the DoT's tender The government's Universal Service Obligation Fund will pay the winning contractor for building the towers. Jio argues that the USOF administration's logic of having to cover older feature phones doesn't hold, since the people in these areas never had any wireless connectivity to begin with. Of course, this argument serves Jio well, since they are incapable of bidding for this tender — their entire network is built with 4G/LTE tech, and isn't compatible with devices that don't support 4G. Excerpts from the letter Here are some excerpts from the letter from PTI's story. MediaNama wasn't able to immediately verify these excerpts. We are hugely disappointed by USOF Administration’s decision to continue with extremely unfair, arbitrary, discriminatory, restrictive and retrograde mandate to use 2G technology for voice in its recent tender for Andaman and Nicobar Islands despite numerous reasons for not mandating a legacy technology. The restriction on latest technology would also impact cost efficiencies as there…
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