The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has suggested that imposition of higher service tax should be avoided to boost growth of mobile telephony in the country.

TRAI Chairman Pradip Baijal said on Wednesday that taxes in India were the highest when compared to other developing countries like China and Pakistan and the government should resort to higher taxation only after the mobile subscriber base had touched the 100 million mark.

That would be the most effective measure to fuel growth in the mobile telephony sector, he said.

Referring to the consultation paper on access deficit charge circulated on the Web, Baijal said TRAI was advocating scrapping the call-to-call regime in favour of percentage of turnover.

Baijal said that ADC was present in all parts of the world, though it had been transitory in nature. It was 30 per cent of total turnover, which was brought down to 10 per cent.

TRAI had suggested that ADC be at around 2-3 per cent, he said.

On implications of lower ADC, he said there would be downward pressure on tariff levels on both fixed line and mobile as the load would be distributed on both the types of operators.