Export Council Wants Dataline Costs Lowered
The Electronics & Software Exports Promotion Council, a government body, has demanded a reduction in international data lines costs to about 60 per cent of the existing Rs 170,000 a month.
Software exporters in India were hit by the relatively high cost of 64 kilo-bytes-per-second data lines.
A similar line lease costs Rs 70,000 in Mauritius. Inland data line rates were nearly 10 times the international rates.
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With communication accou-nting for 15 per cent of the software export cost, firms could ill-afford such heavy charges.
The manpower cost advantage enjoyed by India was negated by neighbouring countries with similar salary levels providing software at half the dataline costs.
Council executive director R H Naqvi said the government should treat communication facilities as raw material for the software industry and extend appropriate tax concessions.
The present department of telecommunications policy regarding high speed data lines poses a deterrant to software development in India.
In addition to the high cost, there was the delay factor in providing data link and a minimum of three years lease contract.
He said lowering telecom tariff would be made up in higher foreign exchange earnings. A software export potential of $ 5.5 billion would be available to India by 2000.
Realisation of this market opportunity is dependent on telecom facilities.