Telecommunications

July 27, 2006
Maran lists out new thrust areas for telecom, IT

NEW DELHI -- Dayanidhi Maran, Minister of Communications & Information Technology, recently outlined the priority areas for his ministry in the third year of the present UPA government. The minister listed out rural telephony, telecom and IT manufacturing, e-governance, as prime areas concerning his ministry.

Maran also said that 250 million connections would be provided by the year 2007 and further 500 million connections by the year 2010. Nearly 85 percent of the geographical area of the country will be covered by mobile telephone by the year 2007. Under rural telephony, all the 41,000 uncovered eligible villages will get a village public telephone by March 2007.

The Minister further said that the country would be made a hub for IT and telecom manufacturing. He stated that the Department of Information Technology (DIT) would provide full support to other central ministries and state governments to facilitate time-bound and systematic adoption of e-governance. DIT will create a ubiquitous platform for such integrated delivery of e-government services consisting of state wide area network (SWAN), community services centers (CSC), state data centers (SDC) and call centers.

Department of Telecom

Numbers of telephone connection in the past two years have doubled and today we have 150 million connections. The target is 250 million by the year 2007 and 500 million by 2010. Mobile coverage will be extended to cover 85 percent of the geographical area of the country by the year 2007. Spectrum availability will be augmented for 3G, improvement of Quality of Service and for additional mobile connections. A project at a cost of about Rs.10 billion for releasing 45MHz of spectrum from defence by end of this year has been launched.

Rural connectivity would receive special attention. All the 41,000 uncovered eligible villages would get a village public telephone by March 2007. Nearly 50 million rural connections by the year 2007 and about 80 million rural connections by the year 2010 would be provided.

Broadband services were launched in 2005, and now cover 300 towns with 1.5 million connections. All secondary and higher secondary schools would be facilitated with broadband by the year 2007. All public health care centers will also be provided broadband coverage by the year 2007. All Gram Panchayats, which are the lynch pin of their plan of de-centralisation of administration, will get broadband connectivity by the year 2010.

Manufacturing, both in telecom and IT sectors, is crucial for job creation. It will also enable India to climb up the value chain. Efforts will be to make India a hub of telecom manufacturing by facilitating more telecom-specific SEZs. An Export Promotion Council will also be set up for providing necessary platform for export of telecom equipment and services. By continuous encouragement for indigenous manufacturing, they intend to make available the handsets at a price level of in the Rs.1,000 by next year. About US $10-11 billion investment can materialise in manufacturing sector in the next two to three years.

Department of IT

Union Cabinet has just approved the national e-governance plan. NeGP aims to provide transparent, integrated and efficient services to citizens incorporating simplified procedures. Department of Information Technology will create a ubiquitous platform for such integrated delivery of e-government services consisting of:

• SWAN in all states by 2007;
• 100,000 CSC spread over all the 6000 blocks in the country by end 2007;
• SDC for all states by 2007;
• Call centers for all states by 2007.

To give a special thrust for adopting IT technology for availability of various applications in Indian languages and to ensure penetration of IT-enabled services to the masses, the Department of Information Technology has already released software tools and fonts in three languages, namely, Tamil, Hindi and Telugu in public domain. Software tools and fonts in two languages, i.e., Punjabi and Urdu are ready for release. Nearly 17 other Indian languages are likely to be covered by 2007. They also intend to create an Indian language Web-browser to bring the benefit of all knowledge available on the Web to the rural masses. These measures would go a long way to ensure that the benefits of IT reach the rural and underserved areas in the country. Enabling the assignment of Indian language domain names on the Internet is also in progress.

In order to give a fillip to high-tech manufacturing in the country, the Department of Information Technology has prepared a draft policy proposing a special package of incentives for the state-of-the-art modern technology for setting up semiconductor fabs, ATM, Solar cells, flat panel displays, storage devices etc. This along with a proactive and industry-friendly hardware policy would make the Indian Electronics/IT Hardware Manufacturing Industry globally competitive and ensure more inflow of investment including FDI into this sector. The domestic demand, which is expected to grow to US $363 billion by 2015 would be leveraged toward this end.

With the proactive policies of the government, the software and ITeS sector exports from India grew from US $ 12.9 billion in the year 2003-04 to US $ 17.7 billion in 2004-05. They are estimated at US $ 23.4 billion during the year 2005-06. Software and services exports are estimated to grow at 32 per cent in dollar terms during the year 2005-06. A special thrust would be given by the Department of Information Technology to the 2-and 3-Tier cities to ensure equitable growth of this sector and maintain global competitiveness. IT and ITeS sector is projected to provide employment to about 2.2 million software professionals by 2008.