The Department of Telecom (DoT), because of political compulsions or for having faculties than compradors, has disagreed with the suggestion of the Ratan Tata-headed Investment Commission for “permitting 74 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in the telecom sector through the automatic route“.

If one has to stomach the fact that 49 per cent FDI exist, of course, with conditionalities, the demand to raise the limit to 74 per cent is clearly not acceptable “in the larger interest of national security”.

On the question of local loop unbundling too the department seems to have sided with BSNL, which is encouraging. DoT according to a Business Standard report said:”Local loop unbundling acts as a disincentive for incumbents for large scale deployments of broadband. Moreover, this would also cause serious commercial and revenue implications for the incumbent.”