Port Louis: India and Mauritius on September 28 signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for institutionalising a framework of bilateral co-operation in the field of telecom and postal services including undertaking partnership and joint ventures in third countries.

The MoU, which was signed between Minister for Communications and IT Pramod Mahajan and his Mauritius counterpart Deelchand Jeeha, also envisages bilateral strategic co- operation in the context of convergence of technologies in the telecom sector.

The main thrust is on exchange of information in the field of spectrum management and standardisation, a spokesperson of Communications and IT Ministry said and added the MoU also outlines undertaking partnership projects and joint ventures in third countries.

The MoU signed on September 28 would be for a period of five years to be extended automatically for another five years.

In another related development, Mahajan on September 28 laid the foundation stone for Ebene Cyber city in Mauritius, which is being billed as the state-of-the-art knowledge park providing facility for Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

Speaking on the occasion Mahajan expressed hope that the cyber city would be completed by December 25 next year so that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee could celebrate his birthday in Mauritius by inaugurating the massive IT project, the spokesperson said.

The facilitating agency for the project is Business Parks of Mauritius Ltd, while the Indian nodal agency is Software Technology Parks of India.

Prime Minister of Mauritius Anerood Jugnauth who was present on the occasion, which saw the laying of foundation stone for the ambitious IT cyber city project, said that a campaign would be launched for taking computer to every home.

The cyber city is expected to offer world-class facility for ICT companies engaged in IT enabled services, call centre operations, business process outsourcing, software development, intelligent manufacturing and IT education.

The parks derives the benefits of India's experience in technology parks such as IT Park in Bangalore, High-Tech Park in Hyderabad and Tidel Park in Chennai.

The facility houses telecom and data communications services infrastructure serviced by hybrid satellite, optical fibre based high speed broadband networking with bandwidth on tap.

A key feature of the India-Mauritius MoU for telecom and post is that India Post would work together with the Mauritius Post for introduction of the "Meghdoot 98" initiative in Mauritius, modalities of which would be worked out now.

Mauritius has expressed interest in the software package "Meghdoot 98" developed by India Post, to computerise their postal services.

The Mauritius side has also expressed desire to introduce postal life insurance in the country in co-operation with India Post.

It was decided that India would facilitate introduction of postal life insurance in Mauritius for which there would be an exchange of officials between the two sides.

PTI