Talking to reporters, he said, "None of the six private companies engaged in providing telecom services in different parts of the country were able to live up to expectations. Far from proving to be good, they even failed to fulfill their commitment towards setting up and expanding the rural telecom network." Private operators had committed to install telephone lines in 98,000 villages, but several villages remained to be connected. "We have levied penalty on those operators who have reneged on their commitment but since the penalty amount was quite meager, they did not hesitate to shell out the penalty," Mr Paswan said.

The telecom ministry has now revised its terms of agreement. "We have now made it binding on them (operators) to fulfill their commitments, failing which their license would be cancelled," the minister said.

Mr Paswan said that initially, when the telecom sector was thrown open to the private sector, companies viewed it as a goldmine and therefore made inflated bids to get the contracts. "However, after getting down to brass tacks they realized that the effort required was much more than what they had thought," he said.

The minister agreed to consider revision in the Internet tariff policy. "I will have the Telecom Regulatory Commission look into the demand for reducing Internet tariff and bring an end to the current practice of dual charge for the same service - both Internet fee and local call charges.

He also agreed that telephone bills must include cost of each long-distance call. The bills at present contain only the number of units of local calls and the total duration of the call. Referring to modernisation, Mr Paswan said the telecom department would soon replace most of the existing telephone lines with latest optical fiber cable "to facilitate improved services".

India Abroad News Service