Bangalore: An informal forum of IT companies in India's silicon valley, Bangalore Forum for Information Technology (BFIT) today (Oct 27, 2004) backed out of their plans to boycott the Bangalore IT. COM following assurances from the Government to improve the city's infrastructure.

"The officials communicated time bound plans of the Government that will remove (infrastructure) bottlenecks and these have been received in good faith," BFIT Facilitator C N Kumar said in a statement in Bangalore.

Philips Software, a member of BFIT early this month said it would withdraw from this year's Bangalore IT. COM in protest against the Government's "apathy" in addressing infrastructure problems in the city.

Other BFIT members including Hewlett Packard, Motorola, Texas Instruments, Sasken, Novell, Sun Microsystems and Synopsys had refrained to comment officially on their participation.

Karnataka IT Secretary K N Shankaralinge Gowda and Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) Director B V Naidu met members of BFIT recently and convinced them of the State's commitment to improve the city's roads and unclog traffic.

"In view of this we have revisited our stand and will encourage our members to actively participate in the event".

Bangalore IT. COM, to begin on November 1, is positioned as Asia's largest IT event, aimed at attracting investments in the IT sector to the State.

Besides BFIT, several other associations have protested against bad roads and clogged traffic in the city prompting the Government to come out with a swift response.