| Grameen Sanchar Society, commonly known as GRASSO, is a non-profit NGO,
working in rural West Bengal, India. GRASSO is an apolitical, unbiased organization run by
culturally open-ended and non-ethnic group of professionals from varied background. It's
mission is to transform the resourceful employed but enthusiastic rural youth into a
successful network through many innovative and uniquely thought out self-employment
schemes. In Kolkata on the Feb 10, 2003, Grameen Sanchar Society , in association with
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) launched the GRASSO, Wireless in Local Loop (WLL)-based
PCOs (Public call offices) in Rural Areas. This is the first time in the country that such
a scheme, was inaugurated where an NGO in support with the central government behemoth like
BSNL, & the state governments departments aimed at improving connectivity in the rural
areas by an IT enabled integrated rural development project on the plank of existing
self-employment & poverty alleviation scheme.
The Rural Will CDMA PCO Phone is to be used as a vehicle to usher in the vital
connectivity that is required to spur on the telephony of both voice & data access to
the people in the telephone dark areas which constitutes vast terrain where otherwise
there has been sufficient developmental activity in raising the living standards in the
villages.
The objectives GRASSO envisaged was to usher in a business process reengineering in the
lives & livelihoods of Rural Bengal, which was producing agri products without getting
remunerative prices. This stifled the growth potential of the Rural Economy. While the
Panchayati Raj revolutionized land reforms in Rural Bengal it lacked the structure to
accelerate growth process through the intervention of available technology.
The Rural Will CDMA PCO Phone programme is promoting community phones in villages where
private telephones are still a rarity. By this process the villagers get the telephones
where the cost of a telephone & it's crucial maintenance & sustenance is easily
provided for by generation of revenue. BSNL is also happy with the revenues they are
getting from the remote corners of Bengal each month from the existing 400 telephones of
theGRASSO network.
In implementing the GRASSO concept we continue to pursue the
following UNDP Millennium ICT initiatives.
- Support in bringing the Telecom and ICT sectors into national e-development strategy &
policy debates.
- Support innovative strategies to implement cutting edge and low cost ICT solutions (open
source, cellular, PDA, VOIP, Wi-Fi wireless local area networks etc.) particularly for
last mile.
- Support coherence and synergy between telecom and other ICT strategies.
- In national e-strategies investigate the establishment of transitional mechanisms and
incentive structures to facilitate locally customized solutions.
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