Distribution of 3G Services Among Rural Towns: Case Study of Bhutan

In developed countries, 3G services are common and usually provided by several private operators with almost 100 % coverage. However, the situation is quite different in most developing countries with majority of people are considered under poverty. In most of these countries, telecommunication services are provided by state enterprise which cannot only make profit but have to support people as well. Therefore, compromise must be made in order to serve people within acceptable profit. In this paper, the distribution of 3G services among rural towns are modeled and optimized by the famous linear programming. The proposed model considers both population coverage and expected income, which can be easily utilized by state telecommunication enterprise of any developing country. The example is made based on the case of three border towns of Bhutan. With flexible adjustment of parameters, the proposed technique provides tradeoff valued to investment.