The entry of new players in the telecom industry is expected to drastically bring down call costs, telecommunications minister A Raja has said. In the next two years, he foresees intra-circle and national call costs to go down to 10 paise and 20 paise a minute respectively. The decision on spectrum allocation for the new entrants will be taken within 15 days, he added.
He urged telecom companies to invest on infrastructure rather than stress on extra spectrum allocation.
Recently, Raja participated in the memorandum of understanding ceremony jointly hosted by the Department of Telecommunications, Reliance Communications and IIT Madras to form a telecom centre of excellence. The centre is a research initiative set up under public-private partnership model with a total investment of Rs 10 crore over 5 years. DoT will contribute Rs 5 crore, Raja said.
The centre would focus on developing technologies including bandwidth-efficient wireless infrastructure, active infrastructure sharing and security aspects.
The signing of the final MoU marks the completion of the first phase of the Telecom Centres of Excellence initiative of the government of India. All the seven centers, in premier academic institutions across the country, and their coordination centre are now in place, which will help bridge the inadequacy of research and development in the telecom sector, Raja said.