A faster and enhanced version of low-cost tablet PC, Aakash, would be launched next month, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said on Monday.

"The second version of Aakash will be launched in May," Sibal told reporters on the sidelines of World IT forum 2012 here. The tablet will be produced domestically, and in this regard the government is talking to various manufacturers from across the world.

"After freezing the technology, we will start manufacturing it. We are calling people from across the world to manufacture it and some people have shown interest," Sibal said.

The new tablet would have a better 3200m AH battery with a three-hour backup, a 700 MHz Cortex A8 processor and a capacitive touch screen which would get over the earlier issues observed in the tablets, Sibal had said earlier.

Recently, Datawind, the maker of Aakash, and Quad Electronics, which is the contract manufacturer of the tablet, have been trading charges against each other.

Quad has said it has not been paid for its work by the tablet maker alleging the letter of credit issued by Datawind was dishonoured and it has not received any payment for its work.

However, Datawind has been claiming that all the payments that was due to Quad have been cleared, except for the 600 units that remain unpaid by IIT-Rajasthan.

At the event, Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot said that government faces the challenge of increasing IT and broadband penetration.

"A key obstacle here is the high cost of IT hardware and connectivity. This challenge can be overcome by encouraging domestic IT manufacturing," Pilot said.

Sibal said India is at the heart of the innovation revolution in the telecom sector.

"We have to ensure that everything is affordable and accessible so that price barriers are broken and actually the ordinary consumer in India is able to access quality information that is necessary for us to move forward," Sibal said.

He added that India has enormous potential for creating economies of scale as most of the people in India still don't have cell phones. Also there will be enormous connectivity across country once the National Optic Fibre Network, which aims to connect 2.5 lakh panchayats, is completed.

Sibal identified lack of content for delivery through these networks as a big challenge.

"We are trying to build ecosystem through which we develop content, develop infrastructure and develop connectivity between that content and infrastructure and that is the way we plan to move forward," Sibal said.

He said that access of information is possible by consumers only if devices to access these information are affordable and accessible to them.

"Mobile revolution has allowed mobile phones to less expensive. The revolution of 3G and 4G are going to be relevant for elites unless we are going to develop manufacturing capacities at home when the cost of devices will go down," Sibal said.

Talking about the roadmap, he said economies of scale will allow produce devices at very low cost which will be affordable for rest of the world.

"Cost of device manufactured in India will be affordable for rest of the world as well so any solution here will only be benfecial not only to 1.2 billion people in India but it will also be beneficial for rest of the world," Sibal said.