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Communication highway preliminary work going on:

Special Correspondent

It will cover Mumbai, Kochi, Chennai and Kolkata: Maran

CHENNAI: Preliminary work is under way with respect to the project of forming an Asian-American communication highway, covering Mumbai, Kochi, Chennai and Kolkata, the Communications and Information Technology Minster Dayanidhi Maran said on Tuesday.

After signing a memorandum of understanding with his Egyptian counterpart Tarek Kamel in Chennai, Mr. Maran told reporters that a project report was being prepared. The Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited and the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited would lay submarine cables, which would go through the Arabian countries. At present, studies were being undertaken. The work of laying the cables would begin by the end of the next year.

The agreement with Egypt for bilateral cooperation, the Minister hoped, would provide Indian telecommunication players the "gateway to the Arab world."

On areas of cooperation, Dr. Kamel said multilingual content development, multilingual enabled services and localisation of Indian software for the Arabian countries would be among them.

Research and Development in wireless technology and use of Information and Communications Technology for health and education were the other areas.

Pointing out that the India software sector had predominantly been developed by private players, Mr. Maran said the Software Technology Parks of India model would be of interest to Egypt.

A team of representatives from the National Association of Software and Service Companies would visit Egypt soon and identify areas of cooperation.

Incentives promised

Assuring Indian companies of incentives if they located their facilities in his country, the Egyptian Minister said his country was establishing many technology and business parks. Apart from major companies, the focus was being given to small and medium enterprises.

Mr. Maran said it had been decided that the two Ministers would meet once in two years. As in the case of Japan, the mechanism of a joint working group with Egypt would also be put in place and the group would meet every three months.

Dr. Kamel said his team would visit Bangalore and Hyderabad.

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