India will definitely complete the 3G auction process this fiscal itself, Sam Pitroda, adviser on IT to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said.
"Concerned people have held discussions with the Prime Minister recently and it was assured that the auction would take place before end-fiscal," Mr. Pitroda told reporters here on the sidelines of the Dr. Arun C. Vakil memorial lecture conducted by the Indo-American Society here on Friday.
Mr. Pitroda said that no decision has yet been taken on divesting a 10 per cent stake in state-owned BSNL.
"The Prime Minister has set up a committee and it is looking into the matter. It will submit its recommendations soon. There are discussions but no decision so far," Mr. Pitroda said.
Last week, Mr. Pitroda himself had said that the Government was looking at selling some stake in BSNL soon.
In his lecture, Mr. Pitroda said that India lacked information infrastructure in a big way which prevented standardisation of measures and planning of development.
"We don't have information infrastructure. There is a leakage in the system. To prevent this leakage, we need information infrastructure. Without this, we can't plan. Launching UID (Unique Identification) programme is a beginning in this direction," he said.
To set up an information infrastructure, the country has to connect 2,50,000 panchayats with high-speed data connectivity.
"To connect all these 2,50,000 panchayats, we need another 3-lakh kilometers of optical fibre cables," he said.
