New Delhi: Communications and Information Technology Minister A. Raja said that there will be no changes in the telecom plan to accommodate new players.

The existing standards and suggestions constituted by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India will be applicable for granting licence to them.

While speaking to mediapersons at the curtain-raiser to ‘India Telecom 2007’ that is to be held in Delhi in December 2007, Mr. Raja said that the subsisting rules would be applied for allocating spectrum to the fresh and subsisting operators.

On shortage of spectrum and postponement by the defence forces in vacating airwaves to authorize telecommunication companies to swell their services, Mr. Raja stated that he would contact National Security Advisor M. K. Narayanan on Wednesday in quest of early spectrum vacation.

Mr. Narayanan is the Committee’s Chairman, which is formed to investigate the multifaceted spectrum issue.

While lecturing at the occasion, Mr. Raja said India now had the best growing telecommunication sector adding over 70 lakh subscribers each month, and it had almost accomplished the number of 25 crore subscribers, three months earlier than the target date. Whereas the rising market promoted worldwide telecommunication participants to establish manufacturing facilities in the Indian market, there was a lot of possibility for taking up the technology and undertaking more indigenous value addition to convene everyday needs of the common person and India-specific requirements.

Centres of Excellence (CoEs) for telecom were being set up in public-private partnership mode in the topmost academic institutions.

Two memoranda of undertaking (MoU) were signed on the occasion, one between IIM-Ahmedabad, Idea Cellular and the Department of Telecom and the other between IIT-Kharagpur, Vodafone Essar and the DoT.