Indian telecom spearheading transformation - Raja

HYDERABAD, INDIA: Communications Minister A Raja Monday said his ministry is aiming to make India a telecom manufacturing hub by facilitating various policies.

Addressing the inaugural session of the World Telecommunication Development Conference here, he said the Indian telecom industry was spearheading the transformation from legacy systems to state-of-the art digital systems.

"The centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) is developing suitable technologies for the growth and digitisation of the Indian telecom sector," he told the conference.

While India followed a technology neutral policy and opened its telecom sector to a variety of technologies and equipment from all over the world, Indian industry had not lagged behind and was making rapid strides in innovating and adopting new technologies suited to Indian conditions.

Raja said an independent regulatory environment in India was promoting healthy competition between various service providers and ensuring that the common user was not neglected.

"Our mechanism for fulfilling universal service obligation wherein all the operators contribute towards providing universal access to telecom services, is making due progress in the desired direction," he added.

Over 1,300 delegates from 140 countries are participating in the conference organised by International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations agency for Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

Raja told the delegates that India was currently adding 20 million telephone connections per month, the highest growth in the world. India has the second largest telephone network in the world with more than 600 million telephones.

Raja also offered to share India's expertise and facilities with other countries to bridge the digital divide in the world.