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BSNL will offer broadband at 2 Mbps: Maran
Source: IRIS (15 December 2006)
State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) will offer broadband services with speed of up to 2 megabits a second to all its existing subscribers who were till now getting 256 kilobits per second (Kbps) connection, Communication and IT Minister, Dayanidhi Maran said today.
Also, subscribers will not be charged for migrating to the high-speed broadband access nor will they have to change their consumer premise equipment.
Announcing the move, Maran said, `We are christening the year 2007 as the Year of Broadband in India and it is now for the private operators to match it or beat it.`
Speaking at the inaugural session of India Telecom 2006, Maran said fresh investment commitments of about USD 2 billion (about Rs 90 billion) from telecom equipment providers was expected in the next one year for setting up manufacturing units in the country.
He said the entry of Nokia into manufacturing followed by Flextronics, Motorola and a whole lot of others has laid the platform for positioning India as a global hub for telecom manufacturing.
Since May 2004, India has already witnessed investment commitments of over USD 17 billion in IT and telecom.