Date:26/05/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/05/26/stories/2005052614061900.htm

National

Maran to visit United States to woo telecom companies

Staff Reporter

COIMBATORE: Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology Dayanidhi Maran will tour the United States from June 5 to woo telecom and computer firms to invest in Tamil Nadu. Talking to reporters here on Wednesday, he said he would try to convince computer chip manufacturing firms such as Intel and AMD and hard disk manufacturing firms such as Seagate to look at Tamil Nadu for their investments.

Mr. Maran was hopeful of the sector attracting investment worth $800-850 millions in the current fiscal. Nokia had decided to set up a manufacturing unit in Chennai, he said. Also, Alcatel, in association with C-DOT, was setting up a Global Research Centre there.

After the UPA Government had taken charge, Ericsson had set up a unit for manufacturing base transmission stations (BTS) in Jaipur, LG had established a handset-manufacturing unit in Pune and Elcoteq had set up shop at Bangalore. Besides, Alcatel and Indian Telephone Industry were involved in the transfer of technology for telecommunication needs by manufacturing Global Satellite Mobile switches and BTS. A unit would shortly come up either at Naini or in Jammu and Kashmir for manufacturing Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) - broadband switches.

Accusing the Tamil Nadu Government of announcing its decision to establish an information technology park without earmarking adequate land, he said that the cost of land had soared in these areas making it difficult for firms to set up shop.

Mr. Maran said that Bangalore was struggling to provide the required infrastructure to accommodate software firms.

Tamil Nadu could capitalise on this and should showcase second-tier towns such as Coimbatore, Madurai and Tiruchi.