March 30, 1999
New Delhi

4.0 Restructuring of DoT

World-wide, the incumbent, usually the Government owned operator plays a major role in the development of the telecom sector. In India, DoT is responsible for the impressive growth in number of lines from 58.1 lakh on April 1, 1992 to 191 lakh in December 1998, showing a CAGR of 20%. DoT is expected to continue to play an important, and indeed, dominant role in the development of the sector.

Currently, the licensing, policy making and the service provision functions are under a single authority. The Government has decided to separate the policy and licensing functions of DoT from the service provision functions as a precursor to corporatisation. The corporatisation of DoT shall be done keeping in mind the interests of all stakeholders by the year 2001.

All the future relationship (competition, resource raising etc.) of MTNL / VSNL with the corporatised DoT would be based on best commercial principles.

The synergy of MTNL, VSNL and the coporatised DoT would be utilised to open up new vistas for operations in other countries.