Department of Telecom (DoT) secretary and experts see potential in India’s telecom sector to grow and attract investors to boost it further
Aruna Sundararajan, telecom secretary, views the telecom industry has the potential to grow immensely in the coming years. Highlighting the government’s National Digital Communication Policy 2018, she said that India is focussed to draw investments worth$100 billion by 2022.
She added that as India’s growing economy has resulted in an increase in the technological aspects and this, in turn, would help in attracting investments from around the world. Telecom majors have also expressed their beliefs in India’s strong growth prospects in the sector in the future.
Telecom growth in the future
Prashant Singhal, global telecommunications leader, EY, said that India was expecting to connect around 2 billion devices in the next 2-3 years. With the advent of 5G, the country would grow at a faster pace, thereby connecting the rural areas and making the internet for all vision a success.
Mathew Oommen, president, Reliance Jio highlighted the importance of the new-age technology in India’s development. He said that 5G and fibre complemented each other, and the telecom sector must explore innovation to ramp up the game. He informed that around 75 per cent traffic on Jio was driven by two or three OTT players.
Experts have opined that with the scale of incoming investments in the telecom sector will soon put India in the list of advancing countries.
Challenges
The telecom sector has been struggling to shape up and provide the network users with the speed desired. The challenges in the infrastructure, major market ownership of the sector by a few private telecoms and merging of companies to boost competition have given rise to the struggle in the industry.
Aruna Sundararajan pointed out that data protection, fake news and cyber security posed as the major challenges in India. Akhil Gupta, chairman, Bharti Airtel, views that a telecom operator investing around 5-10 per cent on the spectrum will result in the desired infrastructure. He added that the current scene saw operators spending almost 95 per cent in acquiring spectrum.
India has been working on data protection law and created the National Digital Communication Policy 2018 that aims to attract around $100 billion investment and create 4 million new job opportunities by 2022.
