Govt to pass 3G Spectrum Bill in winter session: Shaqeel Ahmed

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

New Delhi, Oct 31 (UNI) The government proposes to pass the Bill to enhance the spectrum availability to facilitate 3G services and provide assistance to mobile service operators from the USO Fund in the forthcoming winter session, Minister of State for Telecom Shaqeel Ahmed said here today.

He said the availability of spectrum is critical for the growth of the wireless services in every nook and corner of the country and there should be efficient and optimal utilisation of spectrum.

Dr Shaqeel said efforts were underway to enhance the spectrum availability by releasing it from the existing users, mostly security agencies. This would open up the gateway for rolling out 3G services and will also enhance additional 8,200 million mobile connections.

Inaugurating the 12th International Telecom Summit organised jointly by Assocham and Beacon, Dr Ahmed said that the government was committed to achieve the target of 250 million phones by 2007 and 500 million by 2010.

In order to enhance the investment and growth in the telecom sector, 100 per cent permitted FDI is permitted to the telecom manufacturing sector and in the telecom services sector, the cap of 49 per cent FDI has been raised to 74 per cent.

He further said broadband is the corner stone in our efforts to usher in information society in India.

''We launched broadband services in January 2005 to over 200 towns in one year. By now over 300 towns have been covered with more than 1.5 million connections. The tariff for these services has been brought down consistently. The government has set a target of 20 million broadband subscribers by the end of 2010 as envisaged in the broadband policy and efforts were on to prioritise provision of broadband to schools and colleges,'' said the minister.

Assocham President Anil K Agarwal said that the domestic telecom manufacturing should be positioned in a manner so that it can address telecom requirements of emerging markets in its neighbours like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam.

He further said that in view of special characteristics of telecom and the WTO stipulations for elimination of duties on this segment, the telecom equipment manufacturing will need a special sectoral treatment rather than being governed by general policy framework The objectives of the new strategy to support and encourage telecom equipment manufacturing should have slew of measures that can sustain the domestic telecom subscribers demand and establish a critical size of the Indian telecom hardware manufacturing sector, besides aiming to make Indian telecom manufacturing globally competitive, added Mr Agarwal.

UNI CS PKS DB1344

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