The information technology sector employs 650,000 workers and professionals directly or indirectly and makes a contribution of 2.4 per cent to India's GDP and 20.4 per cent to its exports, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Thursday.

Minister for Communications and Information Technology Arun Shourie said in a written reply that 500,000 route km of optical fibre have been laid in the country by a number of public and private telecommunications companies to increase the bandwidth availability for Internet usage.

Unified licence: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has recommended the prescribed entry fee for basic service operator (with or without wireless in local loop facility) for migration to unified access services licence in a service area, Shourie said.

He said this prescribed entry fee is equal to the entry fee paid by the fourth cellular operator for that service area, or the entry fee paid by the basic service operator itself, whichever is higher.

Telephone: As many as 6.67 crore (66.7 million) telephones have been sanctioned and working in the country as on October 31, 2003, bringing the all India tele-density to 6.24, Shourie said.