Govt to open long distance telephony before Aug 15

Govt to open long distance telephony before Aug 15
REUTERS

NEW DELHI, JULY 15: Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said on Saturday that the government will open domestic long distance telephone operations to the private sector before August 15.

"Recognising the benefits of large-scale competition the government has decided to fully deregulate NLDO (National Long Distance Operations), with no artificial restrictions on the number of licenses to be issued," Vajpayee told a conference of state information technology ministers.

He said long distance telephony would be opened up before August 15, when India marks its independence day. Private players will have to pay a stipulated entry fee and a share of the revenues, he said.

While private firms have begun offering fixed telephone services in several Indian provinces since 1994, long distance telephony is still a monopoly of the government.

Vajpayee said the government was also keen to end monopoly of undersea optical fibre connectivity because this had hurt the growth of Internet services in the country. "Towards this end, private ISPs (Internet Service Providers) will be allowed, either singly or jointly to set up their own landing stations anywhere in India in collaboration with international undersea bandwidth carriers," he told the state ministers.

Currently state-run Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd controls access to global fibre optic pipes and overseas telecommunication links. Private Internet service providers have been allowed to set up international gateways subject to government approvals but Vajpayee said this was not enough. "Constraints of capacity in international data communication have severely hampered the growth of Internet services in the country," he said.

India's software industry said last month that Internet bandwidth requirement, currently at five gigabits per second, was expected to double by the year-end, and zoom to 300 gigabits per second by 2005.

The Federal Government and state information technology ministers will finalise a roadmap to turn India into a global player in the knowledge-based economy, a government statement said.

With less than one million subscribers, India has a low Internet penetration in a nation of one billion people. Telephone density is barely 2.6 per 100 compared with a world average of around 15.

Vajpayee urged the states to launch a massive programme of telephone connections in Indian villages, greater use of information technology in governance, agriculture and traditional industries. "If IT has forced businesses to conduct their operations at Internet speed, we in government cannot afford to continue working in the same old style and same old speed," he said.