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K'taka seeks center's help for hardware park

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE: To hasten the process of setting up a hardware park in Bangalore, Karnataka CM Dharam Singh urged Union Minister for Communication and IT, Dayanidhi Maran to allocate funds towards its establishment.





He was talking to the industry, media and awardees at a function to launch Bangalore IT.COM 2004 and presentation of awards for state IT exports. He requested the IT Minister, who was present at the event, to support the state's initiatives to set up earth stations and incubation centers in Hubli and Belgaum.





He also requested Maran to accord Special Economic Zone (SEZ) status to the hardware park. "We are keen to promote IT and ITES/BPO beyond Bangalore to secondary cities. For this purpose, we will allocate five acres land and Rs 100 lakh each in cities like Gulbarga and Belgaum," Singh said.



On the forthcoming BangaloreIT.COM 2004, which would be held in November he said, " We would like to make this event a people's movement in other parts of the state."



Addressing the industry, Maran lauded the efforts the STPI in Karnataka, which had contributed 34 percent of the national exports touching $4.2 billion. Terming the BPO and IT Enabled services as the second wave of IT, he stressed that the government was doing the needful to nurture and counter potential inhibiting factors. "The perceived problem of inadequacy of data protection laws is being addressed through legislative initiatives," he added.





Maran used the occasion to request the IT industry to show some patriotism while using domain names. "In countries like UK, Singapore and even Pakistan they use, co.uk, co.sg or co.pk. I humbly request you to display some patriotism and use co.in for e-mail IDs and website addresses."





Maran and Singh also presented awards for Karnataka's Best IT exporters for 2003-04. Some prominent awardees include Infosys and Wipro, which topped among Indian companies; IBM and Digital Globalsoft among MNCs; Dell and HTMT in the BPO segment and ITTIAM and Cepha Imaging in the fastest growing SMEs category.





Maran also said that the Center would take steps to bring down Internet access rates in the country. He informed that the Ministry was speaking to companies including VSNL and MTNL to introduce broadband using ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) and DSL (digital subscriber line).





He added that the government is looking at the TRAI recommendations on broadband connectivity.



On the status of the Convergence bill, Maran said, "We are talking to different agencies and receiving their reactions. We are talking with the Information and Broadcasting ministry. A convergence commission will be set up after the bill is passed."



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