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The government of India expects to take in 296.48 billion rupees (about $6.55 billion) in revenue from telecommunications services during the next financial year, which starts on April 1, 2011. The figures were drawn from the county's recently released federal budget document.

The Wall Street Journal reported that this figure includes license fees from telecom operators, spectrum usage charges and receipts through the auction of bandwidth for wireless broadband services, according to the budget, which was tabled in the Indian parliament.

Indian telecom operators share part of their revenue as license fees and spectrum usage charges with the Department of Telecommunications, a government agency that is part of the Ministry of Communications and IT. The department also collects a one-time fee from new telecom companies.

India currently has the fastest-growing telecom network in the world, with 752 million mobile subscribers served by a variety of wireless service providers: the state-owned telecommunications company BNSL, as well as Airtel, Idea, Reliance, BSNL, Aircel,Tata Indicom, Vodafone (News - Alert), MTNL and Loop Mobile. Indian telecom operators added over 227 million wireless subscribers in the 12 months between December 2009 and December 2010 alone, averaging nearly 19 million subscribers every month.

The newly released federal budget will raise the ceiling on foreign direct investment in India. In his budget speech, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the limit for foreign institutional investors to invest in corporate bonds specifically targeted for infrastructure has been raised to $25 billion from $5 billion earlier, said the Wall Street Journal.

The Indian government has also reduced the tax on interest paid to foreign investors lending money for infrastructure projects to five percent from its previous 20 percent.