Intra-circle rate may drop to 10p/call: Raja

The intra-circle call rate may come down to 10 paise when new players enter the telecom market, A Raja, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, said today.

Speaking to reporters after inaugurating the Telecom Centre of Excellence (TCOE) at IIT Madras, Raja said seven new players would get licences in the next 15 days. "When these players enter the market, per call rate will down to 10 paise for intra-circle, while per call rate within the country would be 20 paise," he added.

IIT Madras, Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Reliance Communications signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to set up TCOE, which will focus on telecom infrastructure and energy at IIT-M.

The signing of the agreement marks the completion of the first phase of the TCOE initative of the central government on public-private partnership. All the seven TCOEs in seven academic institutions and their co-ordination centres are now in place. 

The activities of the new R&D centre would include developing bandwidth-efficient wireless infrastructure technologies, active infrastructure sharing techniques and security of infrastructure.

Raja said Reliance Communications will invest Rs 10 crore over the next five years in the centre.