Maran opens telecom gates to Japan

NEW DELHI: Minister of Communications & IT, Dayanidhi Maran has invited Japanese investment in the booming Indian telecom industry and services sector. He urged Japan to look seriously towards India for diversifying its manufacturing investments and leveraging India's IT capabilities. Presently, Maran is leading a high level delegation to Japan on the invitation of Minister for Internal Affairs and Communication, Japan, Taro Aso.






Maran held discussions with Aso on telecommunications and IT sector and reviewed the follow up on the decisions taken during the Asia Pacific Telecommunity Conference held in Bangkok. In a joint statement signed by both the sides in Tokyo, it was agreed to set a timeframe for the constitution of a joint task force for identifying specific areas of cooperation and for taking forward the cooperation between the two sides in the identified areas and sectors.





Some of the specific areas suggested by the Indian side were embedded-software, VLSI design, CAD/CAM, telecom solution, software systems etc. Likewise, the sectors suggested include automobile manufacturing, aerospace, banking, etc. They had also decided to promote joint R&D and standardization for ubiquitous service and network technology. Further, technical cooperation in application of ICT products and services was also identified.





Maran also elaborated India's efforts on Asia Broadband Program, the setting up of the NIXI for '.IN' domain name registration and testing of quality of service of Ipv6 launched by ERNET, the State Wide Area Network (SWAN) initiative for e-governance applications and the areas for collaboration in machine translation, language computing and network solutions etc.





Maran also visited Panasonic Center in Tokyo and got acquainted with the current research on the technologies of the future. He also met the heads of major Japanese and Indian companies in Tokyo and extended an invitation to the Japanese companies to participate in the forthcoming "Indiasoft 2005" exhibition to be held in Chennai in the month of March.