Mahajan urges equitable telecom penetration

Pramod Mahajan, Minister of Communication, IT and Parli-amentary Affairs urged the industry to work towards making telecom facilities accessible in all regions of the country. Tele-density should be equally spread across rural and urban areas as well as across all the states depending on the population of the states. But this is not so as in the case of Bihar, which comprises 10 percent of the population but has a tele-density of only one-percent.

By 2005 India's expects to install 40 million phone lines but the Minister is not satisfied with the target. "I wish we could take the figure to 100 million phone lines during the period considering the population of 1 billion in our country," he said. Speaking at the inaugural session of Supercomm Asia 2002, the Minister urged the industry to set up world-class service infrastructure along with competitive tariffs comparable to the rest of the world.

Mahajan said that the fast changing technological landscape provided challenges to governments, regulators, service providers and the industry. But it was in everyone's interest to work in the best interest of the consumers with the aid of rapid technological advances. The Minister also urged the need to focus on developing relevant content for the masses if the industry wanted to leverage on the benefits of the converged economy.

Mukesh D Ambani, VP and MD, Reliance Industries Ltd urged the industry to join hands in partnership to develop the communication infrastructure in the country. He said that the time has come for the industry to imbibe the 'spirit of collective commerce' and share infrastructure rather than work as isolated entities. He reiterated the group's commitment to the communications sector saying that the group is the process of setting up an organization employing 10,000 professionals to develop applications for enterprises and consumers.

Other speakers at the session included Shyamal Ghosh, Secretary, Department of Telecom, Arun Netravali, Chief Scientist, Lucent Technologies and Robert D Blackwill, US Ambassador to India. While Netravali dwelt at length on the shape of the technological developments that would engulf the sector, Blackwill pointed out the rapid regulatory changes taking place in the country making it one of the most promising destinations for American telecom companies.