New Delhi: The Department of Telecom is planning to set up an application development centre with an outlay of Rs. 1,000 crore over a three-year period.
The project will be financed by the Universal Services Obligation fund. The move is aimed at generating income for the USO fund in addition to the revenue share received from telecom operators.
According to the scheme being worked out financing will be limited to Rs. 2 crore per proposer and a single entity will not be given support for more than two projects. Financing will be considered only if the bank appraising the project agrees to finance the requirements initially up to 9 times the contribution of the proposer.
USO fund will reimburse up to four times the project cost. The payment will be made as equity participation.
The proposing entity will have the option to buy back 75 per cent of the equity anytime up to 5 years from disbursement at double the cost.
There will be a two-year moratorium on repayment and interest payment.
Payment of interest during the moratorium period will be borne by the USO fund.
USO fund plans to earmark an outlay of Rs. 50 crore, Rs. 200 core and Rs. 1,000 crore over the first 3 years.
To be called Application Development Infrastructure (ADI), the centre will provide testing facilities, support for launch and commercial run and storage capacities to selected entrepreneurs. The ADI will be connected with all telecom service providers and a payment gateway that will enable application developers to get access to customers across the country from day one of the launch.
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