Maran's exit not to affect telecom initiatives

New Delhi, May 15: The exit of Dayanidhi Maran as the Communications and IT Minister will not affect many of the policies that he had kickstarted during his tenure which ended abruptly on Sunday.

Mr Maran's attempt to bring in AMD, the world's largest chipmaker, and other initiatives to pitchfork India into the world telecom scenario will not be hampered, sources in the ministry said.

Maran was successful in bringing the first chip manufacturing facility into the country when AMD signed a technological pact with SemIndia, an NRI-backed consortium for a three-billion dollar project in Hyderabad.

Reacting on the future prospects of the telecom industry, Bharti Enterprise Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said the entry of foreign players in offering 3G mobile services and allocation of spectrum would not be affected due to Mr Maran's resignation.

''The government is committed to the telecom industry and is likely to remove all the impediments confronting it,'' Mr Mittal said.

Meanwhile, IT industry body Nasscom said Mr Maran has been instrumental in reinforcing India's position as the premier destination for IT outsourcing and in taking great interest in promoting the growth of the domestic market for IT.

The initiatives of Mr Maran whether to provide cheaper bandwidth, broadband services and roaming rates, bring about the 3G policy or divert internet traffic within the country by hosting servers in India will be carried on in the same fashion after his exit.

During his tenure, world's largest mobile phone maker Nokia finally agreed to set up a manufacturing unit in India, besides others like Ericsson and Motorola.

The exit of the Minister is like his predecessors Mr Arun Shourie, Mr Pramod Mahajan and Mr Ram Vilas Paswan during whose tenure litigation, disinvestment and reforms in the telecom sector were at the peak.

Mr Maran's brush with controversies started when he stepped into the domain of telecom regulator TRAI on the crucial issue of Access Deficit Charge (ADC), a fee paid by private operators to BSNL for its rural and remote area networks -- despite the TRAI Act making it clear that regulating tariffs and ADC was TRAI's domain.

It was felt that he took the ill-fated step, from which he subsequently backtracked, to settle scores with former TRAI Chairman Pradip Baijal. It was not just that, Maran also got most of the TRAI proposal given under Baijal's regime reworked under a new Chairman again -- like 3G recommendations.

The other step which might not have made any economic sense to telecom PSUs like BSNL and MTNL was the much-touted OneIndia scheme -- where one can call any part of the country at Rs one a minute. Analysts exactly did not approve this as tariffs rates in India were already the lowest in the world.

The telecom industry does acknowledge that hiking FDI in telecom to 74 per cent might not have been his decision but getting it done in a coalition government was one of his biggest achievements.

The industry says the pending issues needing immediate attention are 3G policy and spectrum vacation, which will now wait for a new minister and could be delayed.

The addition of over six million mobile telephony subscribers a month was seen as a reflection of his policies and it was during his time, India joined the elite club of 100 million mobile subscribers. Maran had set a target of 500 million telephone connections by 2010.

To bring competition into the National and International Long Distance telephony, he also reduced the license fee substantially as well as revenue share.

The result was that over 20 companies bagged licenses to offer these services, a move that did not go down well with Finance Ministry. He also tried to convince mobile operators to reduce the exorbitantly high roaming rates.

Mr Maran resigned on Sunday night from the Cabinet after a resolution was passed against him by his party DMK for 'violating party discipline' and bringing it to disrepute.

UNI