LAHORE, Jan 24: The PTCL board decision to reduce charges by 17 per cent for point-to-point fixed lease circuit being used by cell phone companies would help these firms to decrease their call rates from five to eight per cent.
This was stated by Federal Information Technology Minister Awais Leghari while talking to newsmen after inaugurating an Internet service by a local university here on Saturday.
Mr Leghari said the decision to slash fixed lease circuit rates had been taken at a PTCL board meeting held in Islamabad on Friday. He said the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority should now immediately start negotiating with the mobile phone companies to ensure that the benefit reached the subscribers.
The reduction in lease circuit rates by the PTCL, according to him, would help reduce mobile phone companies' expenditure and as such they were bound to pass on the relief to their subscribers.
In reply to a question, he said the PTCL had developed a research and development (R&D) fund of Rs1 billion and was contributing one per cent of its revenue (around Rs600 million-Rs700 million) to establish centres of excellences to conduct research and create demand for the IT sector.
The minister said the IT ministry had already signed an agreement with the National College of Arts to establish a centre of excellence, while the FAST University was working on an Urdu software development project. He said software houses and even university students would be given R&D projects to create a bigger job market. He said the government projects would also create opportunities for IT professionals.
Mr Leghari said the cell phone companies and the fixed phone companies that would start functioning after the deregulation of the PTCL, had been asked to contribute towards the PTCL R&D fund. He said the clause to bound fixed phone companies to contribute towards R&D fund had been included in the legislation draft, while the same clause for mobile phone companies was being included.
Regarding the regulation of private sector IT colleges, the minister said he had asked the Higher Education Commission to establish an accreditation council to regulate the private sector IT colleges in the country. "I know that many IT colleges are charging high fees but not imparting quality education to their students," he added.
The minister also said the cyber crime legislation draft preparation was at advanced stages and would hopefully be presented before the federal cabinet in a month's time.
Replying to another question, he said the federal government had signed an MoU with a telecommunication company of the UAE for the laying of second sub-marine cable to link Pakistan with the outer world.
