3G pre-bid conference to be on Oct 12

Chennai, Sep 11 : The pre-bid conference with prospective bidders for third generation (3G) mobile telephony services is likely to be held Oct 12 where the procedure and schedule of spectrum auction will be discussed.

'Department officials are going to Geneva to attend a conference, so the pre-bid meet will be held around Oct 12,' said IT and Communication Minister A. Raja here Friday.

He was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a conference information, communications and technology organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Tamil Nadu government.

Asked about divestment in the state-owned telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam, Raja said: 'BSNL will be listed only on the consent of employee unions.'

The minister said the government also planned to shift information technology from the central list to the concurrent list so that the states have more say in this regard.

Post, telegaph, telephones, wireless, braodcasting and other like other forms of communications are currently in the union list, which comes under the exclusive purview of the federal government.

He also said the government has given in-principle clearance to eight proposals from semiconductor manufacturers involving an investment of Rs.70,000 crore out of 15 proposals it had received.

'Most of the investments are in photo-voltaic projects,' the minister said.

Earlier, inaugurating the conference, Raja said incentives for IT units located in various Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) may be extended by three years, and that that the issue has been discussed with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

'Hopefully, the extension of incentives will happen soon.'

The minister also said the IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) sector grew by 12 percent last fiscal to USD 71 billion, of which USD 47.3 billion were from exports.