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Our Bureau

New Delhi , June 14

THE Minister for Communications and IT, Mr Dayanidhi Maran, today said the Government would come out with guidelines on hike in foreign direct investment cap for telecom services to 74 per cent from the existing 49 per cent, in a week.

"The FDI work is in its final stages. We will send it to the PMO for approval. It is a matter of a week," Mr Maran said here.

According to sources in the Department of Telecom, public sector banks with foreign stake would be exempted from the enhanced 74 per cent cap in telecom services firms.

For instance, if State Bank of India, where the total foreign shareholding represents 19.83 per cent of the total capital, were to invest in a telecom company, it is likely to be taken as domestic equity.

The Cabinet had earlier approved the move to increase FDI cap with riders, which included that the majority of directors on the board, including the chairman, managing director and CEO, and CTO, should be resident Indians. A clause mandating resident Indian promoter to hold at least 10 per cent equity of the licensee company has also been retained in the guidelines being sent for PMO approval.

The Minister added that DoT was getting the views of various players in the industry on the new policy taking into account the rapid changes in technology.

"At the time of assuming charge, I had talked about reviewing New Telecom Policy as the technology keeps changing in the telecom sector. For instance, the current NTP talks about 70 million phones by 2007, but we have overshot the targets already. We now have to set new targets for the next 5 years, taking into account technologies like Voice over IP," he added.

The Minister said DoT is currently holding discussions with CDMA and GSM players on telecom regulator TRAI's spectrum proposal, including the issue of entry fee for 3G services and would then approach the Cabinet for a policy on the same.

He, however, pointed out that operators should first utilise the available spectrum efficiently. "First, let these people go in and put more towers and make efficient use of the spectrum available to them," he said.

Mr Maran said that he dreams of "uniform rates within the country" moving forward.

" We are going towards `One India' and uniform rates within the country. It means that calling in the country will be like calling within the States," Mr Maran said, but declined to divulge further details.

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