The minister for IT and telecommunications, A. Raja, has rejected the telecom industry's request to reduce the USO Fund burden from the current 5 per cent of telecom operators' annual revenues to 2.5 per cent. According to telecom service providers, the levy should be reduced as the USO Fund has enough finances for many new mobile and broadband projects. The operators state that if the levy is reduced, they would reduce tariffs by 2.5 per cent. However, according to the DoT, the levy cannot be reduced at a time when the teledensity gap between urban and rural areas is very high.