Boom time of Telecom Industry continues

New Delhi, Dec 26 (UNI) Keeping pace with one of the fastest growing industries in the world, Indian telecom industry with over 185 million telephones presently is on the ride of phenomenal growth, as millions of telecom users are in for a huge bonanza with cutting- edge technologies -- third generation mobile services, introduction and spread of IPTV, Mobile TV and WiMax.

Minister of Communications and Information Technology Dayanidhi Maran, setting a 'Vision 2010', recently called 2007 'the Year of Broadband' in India, as the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has set up a target of 250 million phones by December 2007, taking the tele-density to 22 per cent.

India, holding the fifth place after China, the US, Japan and Russia, has 183.46 million telephones as on November 30, 2006 registering a 50 per cent growth, as against 125.79 million as on December 31 last year.

With reduction in licence fee from 15 per cent of revenue to 6 per cent for NLD/ILD licences, sharing of infrastructure to optimise efficiency, launching of 'One India Plan' to allow calls at rupee one per minute and amendment to Indian Telegraph Act to enable the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund to support mobile telephony and broadband services in rural and remote areas of the country are some of factors putting India on a very high trajectory.

The growth of wireless services has been tremendous with 78 per cent in November 2006 as compared to 68 per cent in December 2005, as the number of internet subscribers grew at 25 per cent while broadband subscribers grew from a meager 0.18 million to 1.32 million during 2005-06.

The Public Sector Units (PSUs) have a share of more than 56 per cent of the internet subscribers as on March 2006.

Thus, the tele-density has steadily increased to 16.28 per cent as on November 30, 2006 from 11.32 per cent at the beginning of the year.

With the Government's several steps to encourage participation of private players, the share of private sector has risen from 54.54 per cent in December 2005 to 64.14 per cent in November 2006.

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