Minister for Information Technology Anusha Rehman on Tuesday emphasised upon the need to revise the existing telecom policy and tasked the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) R&D Fund to facilitate and assist in preparing recommendations for the telecom policy before the upcoming spectrum auction.
The minister was presiding over the 27th board meeting of National ICT R&D Fund, an organisation of Ministry of Information Technology. The board discussed the annual budget of National ICT R&D Fund for the fiscal year 2013-14 and reviewed the progress of the ongoing projects of the Fund and ordered closure of those projects that have not shown any progress in view of the monitoring committee of the R & D Fund.
The minister directed that the fund should be spent on targeted Centers of Excellence, especially for Broadband Access Technologies and Next Generation Networks. It was also decided that the fund should help re-initiate research in URL Filtering. Anusha also stressed on the need for review of R&D Implementation Framework for the next 10 years.
National ICT R&D Fund under the Ministry of Information Technology is committed to need based ICT centric research and development in the country.