Government on Wednesday promised further concessions for non-peak hour tariff for telephone calls upto 200 kms as Communication Minister Ram Vilas Paswan asserted in the Lok Sabha that target of phone on demand by 2002 was attainable. Replying to a debate on new telecom policy (NTP-1999), he refuted charges of scam and revenue losses of upto Rs 65,000 crore due to various measures and said government was only continuing the policy of liberalisation and privatisation initiated since 1980. “We have allowed local calls upto 200 kms to benefit subscribers. But the call charges are same for the day and night... Now we are considering to reduce charges during the night time (by increasing the pulse rate),” Paswan said.
Declaring that the liberalisation policy was irrevocable, he wondered why there was opposition from Congress members to the inclusion of wireless in local loop (WLL) technology as part of basic services particularly when the subscriberes were major beneficiaries. Earlier P R Dasmunsi (Cong), who initiated the debate, said the government had lost over Rs 50,000 crore by changing the licencing fee to revenue sharing for cellular operators. He also alleged that it was encouraging cartelisation for optical fibre cable networking to benefit a select few companies.
Bureau Report