AS demand for a comprehensive telecommunications network spreads from the urban sprawl to the countryside, telecommunications operators are facing new problems.
The installation of a telephone network is costly and frequently dogged by environmental difficulties.
According to Gianmario Costa, a specialist in network requirements with Italtel, rural areas are generally characterised by lack of infrastructure; scarcity of locally available qualified technical personnel; difficult topographical conditions such as mountains and rivers; severe climatic conditions; sparse and scattered populations; limited social and economic development.
These factors increase the high overheads of a network.
In the Asian region, the rural inhabitants, on average, comprise about 70 per cent of the total population. Even so, should national service carriers take the trouble to install comprehensive systems and, if so, how? ''The welfare and socio-economic advancement of a country will largely depend on the rates at which benefits of development can be extended to the country's non-urban, or rural population,'' said David Turner, the chief of the communications division of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia-Pacific (ESCAP).
He pointed to a study in the mid-1980s on the economic benefits of improved telephone services to northern Luzon and northern Mindanao in the Philippines. It concluded that the average business subscriber would receive benefits 13 times the yearly cost per line in northern Luzon and 20 times in northern Mindanao. For agricultural establishments, the benefit cost ratio went up to 44.6 per cent.
