Mahajan promises to bring down telecom licensing fee

NEW DELHI: Pramod Mahajan, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Information Technology and Communications, promised a downward correction of license fee, revenue share and spectrum fee long demanded by telecom operators in a phased manner to international levels. He said that he would soon take up the matter with the Finance Minister and give some relief to the industry.

In order to provide impetus to the mission of taking IT to the people Mahajan said that a committee headed by Justice V N Khare had been set up to look into the possibility of establishing e-Courts throughout the country. The committee was likely to submit its recommendations in the next six months - eight months. Other action plans initiated by the government to bring real benefits to the people include e- Banking, e-Health, e-Education and a single e-Window clearance. The government has set up a committee to look into the ways and means of operationalising the concept of a single e-Window under the vice chairmanship of Sam Pitroda.

Mahajan was addressing a plenary session today titled "ICT Report" at the India Economic Summit jointly organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and World Economic Forum. He also said that a legal definition of what constituted the IT-enabled services (ITeS) was urgently required so that the government could consider the issues relating to this sector more effectively.

Replying to the recommendations made by the IT CEOs in an earlier workshop of the Summit, Mahajan said that the Ministry has already asked STPI to tie-up with International Long Distance (ILD) operators and carry voice traffic. However, for addressing issues such as sharing of ITeS infrastructure by domestic companies, allowing EPBX connectivity to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and allowing connection of IPLC to PSTN; the IT, ITeS, Telecom and Internet Service Providers (ISP) players would have to arrive at a consensus on the direction of change.

Responding to another significant recommendation of the ICT panel, Mahajan said that he would try to ensure that the government guideline to spend three percent of the budget on IT expenditure is made mandatory and that spending is judiciously spread through the year.