Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Reliance Infocom have bagged bulk of the contract for setting up rural community phones under the Universal Services Obligation Fund.

Out of 300 secondary switching areas, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd had been awarded contract for 184 secondary switching areas, while Reliance bagged contracts for 97 areas, an official statement said in New Delhi on Monday.

This marks the completion of the bidding process for rural community phones in 48,310 villages with a population of more than 2,000 each, and with no other public telephone facility. The competitive bidding brought down the cost of the project by about 17 per cent from the reserve price, the statement said.

The Universal Services Obligation Fund administration is also planning to cover all the 570,000 villages with public phones. It has already signed agreements for disbursal of subsidy from the fund to more than 520,000 village public telephones. Bids for the remaining 57,000 villages have also been invited and the agreements are likely to be signed by November this year.

Agreements have also been signed for replacement of more than 180,000 village public telephones on multi access radio relay technology.

The department of telecommunications would also soon invite bids for setting up tele-information centres providing access for both voice and data in villages with a population of more than 2,000, the statement said. The department would also invite bids shortly for providing telecom facilities to new rural subscribers, the statement said.