Use of Biofuels is no more limited to vehicles only. Now the mobile phone operators are embracing Biofuels to power base stations in rural India to expand coverage areas.

The use of mobile phones is burgeoning in India. However, this is not true for every Indian city as outside the chief cities, mobile coverage is dispersed, as there is not even dependable amount of electricity in most of the parts.

A major part of India comes under rural segment. This rural India is either devoid of electricity connections or has a shortage of power supply that is likely to ruin the coverage expansion plans of mobile operators in rural India.

Power accessibility in rural India is unfortunate. But by converting the energy of organic matter into Biofuel, communities in rural areas could market it to mobile companies that can use it to power their base stations, which receive and beam wireless signals.

Currently, two experimental schemes are in progress in Nigeria, Lagos, and Pune in India in attempt to power Global System for Mobile Communication networks with Biofuel. Globally, over two billion people use GSM, a digital-standard for cell phones.

GSM Association (GSMA), a development fund, along with mobile operators Idea Cellular and Ericsson sare now testing a mobile phone base station powered by Biodiesel.

"Apart from our desire to expand our coverage, Biofuel produces economic empowerment, because lack of connectivity is directly related to economic impoverishment," stated Prashanth Donepudi, Project Manager for Nigerian GSM Association Development Fund, in a statement reported on February 16, 2007 by scidev.net.

Project's first phase examines the viability of non-edible plant based fuels, like Jatropha and cotton, is near completion. In the next trial stage, a supply chain will be established which will use home-grown crops for producing Biodiesel to supply power to 5 to 10 mobile phone base-stations in Maharashtra, India.

If the experimental project is successful, GSMA aims to take this program to other regions of India with Idea.

According to the RNCOS report "Indian Power Sector (2006)", the Indian government is encouraging foreign players to establish power generation projects solely based on renewable energy on Build-Own-Operate basis.

The market research report paints the complete picture of the Indian power sector and gives a detailed analysis of various parameters like power generation and consumption, infrastructure (with account on power plants like NTPC, National Hydroelectric Power Corporation, GMR Energy Ltd, etc), power transmission, and distribution (with role of private players like Reliance Energy and Tata Power). The report also discusses the drivers, opportunities, challenge, and the regulatory framework. The future outlook of the sector has been discussed in detail for investors.

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