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Government is committed to industry support: PM

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Supriya Rai
New Update

NEW DELHI, INDIA: At the opening of the seventh edition of the India Telecom 2012 at Vigyan Bhawan today, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stressed upon the need to accelerate rural density to facilitate rural economy and inclusive growth. Singh also said that broadband services at affordable tariff would help grow India's GDP.

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''The Indian telecom sector has seen phenomenal growth over the past decade or so. With around 96.5 crore telephone connections, India, today, is the second largest telecom market in the world as a whole," he said. The telecom sector, Singh said, has also been the driver of Foreign Direct Investment and FII flows into our country. It has contributed in a major way to the dynamism of our economy.

"The full potential of telecommunications in enabling higher growth will not be realized until the use of telephones spreads much wider in the rural economy of India as well. While urban India has today reached a teledensity of 169 per cent, the teledensity in rural India stands at only 41 per cent," he stressed. The bulk of the 59 per cent people who do not use phones in rural areas are perhaps from the socially and economically backward sections of our society, feels Singh.

Broadband, he said, improves the lives of people by providing affordable access to information and knowledge. ''Many Information and Communication Technology applications such as e-commerce, e-banking, e-governance, e-education and telemedicine require high speed Internet connectivity. Studies show that there is a direct correlation between an increase in broadband connectivity and growth in a country's GDP," Singh said.

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He also urged department of telecom to think big and think creatively; and how to make available resources, either through the USO Fund or otherwise, are better used to achieve this purpose. "We cannot and we should not have an India where lack of a phone is a hindrance to inclusive growth," Singh said. Referring the National Telecom Policy-2012, Singh said that it envisages 70 per cent rural penetration by 2017 and 100 per cent by 2020.

PM also believes that the country needs to strengthen its domestic manufacturing capabilities across the entire value chain in telecom and electronics. Singh said, as a major automobile buying country, we have developed a strong automotive sector and said that this can be and must be replicated in telecom and electronics.

''We need leaders in telecom and electronics manufacturing who can break new ground and create the ecosystems to enable India to be a major producer of hardware,'' he said. Singh said that the government is committed to do everything possible to support efforts. ''The telecom revolution offers myriad opportunities for accelerating our nation's development,'' he concluded.

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