Digital India by CII

Digital India www.telecomlive.com tiesandpossibilitieswhichtechnologycanreallyunlock. For all of this, we need a robust telecom infrastructure which is ahead of its times. Today, if you look at, the whole ecosystem is falling very nicely in place. We can see policy is well placed. We are getting handsets which are affordable or continuously becoming affordable. Today we are having probably over 300 mn data capable smartphones in India. The rest of ecosystem is developing around it like e- commerce, etc. If we are able to grab this and carry on to a secure, resilient telecom network which provides the depth of coverage to the last mile, enables the billion plus people of India to actually ride on this highway and be able to utilise alltheserviceswhicharecoming. Clearly a big opportunity is ahead of us. There are three big things which we need to look. First, telecommunication infrastructure which should be resilient, secure and ahead of its time. Second, we need to build massive datacentres which will help not only to store this data but analyse using the algorithms and be able to throw out intelligent action- able information. And the third is the internet of things. There could be sensors, modules which will be practically embedded to things which we use. These are the important key things which I believe can bring technology paradigm whichcanunlockthehumanpossibilitiesoftechnology. Govt should allow unrestricted VoIP services Rajendra Kr Bahuguna, RailTel Corporation of India Ltd We have been talking about technology perspective but not focusing on user perspective. What exactly users want? When you look at historical situation, telephone connection started from landline. At that time there used to be a debate “who wants a mobile phone”. Mobile phone came with some tariff and DoT was working on it. But when incoming calls weremadefree,itwasjustblasted.Wecouldnotmanagethe network. This is the technological change that should take place and users must benefit. We got the benefit of mobile development and a stage where broadband development is happening. On one hand we are asking, why the broadband development is not happening, why we are backward and all other countries are going forward. On the other hand we are restricting it to be explored. Now, the technology is making it easier for people to access. We should leave it to take its owncourse. Forget about the broadband, there are many rural areas where mobile phone is still not accessible. Because business only focuses where money can come. RailTel, known as neutral service provider, supports the network provider with backend infrastructure. We ourselves are in the business of broadband and enterprise. And in this space, we are trying to get into cities, which are either tier-1 or non- metros. You will find us in government sector or major enterprises,thentier-2citiesandinruralareas. We provide certain services free in the rural area. We have 5,000 railway stations in rural areas where we can build the infrastructure so that data will become free. WiFi technology is also coming. How long can we stop technology from its exploration? In India, still VoIP is not permitted. So, the regulation remains where it is. Technology has taken over, why we are trying to block VoIP? I want to block because I have not added infrastructure. All the ISPs in the country or whosoever started VoIP is to pay tax on same rate. For level playing field, we need to let the technology come. 4G is going to beinthecitiesandWiFiwillbethe4Gofvillages. Let net neutrality be self-regulated for the time being Pankaj Sharma, Uninor Net neutrality debate has been going on from 6- 8months.Thisdebatehadearlierbeengoingonin Europe and now got transferred to India. Net neutrality means equal internet access to all. Every stakeholder has agreed to this statement. There are some hard boundaries around it in terms of what FCC has defined, also known as pipeline rules. These rules say no blocking of legal content, throttling, no paid privatization and also reasonable traffic management. As long as these rules are concerned, we need to wrap it. But the question is do we need a regulation around it or in country like India where competition is so much and offering the lowest rates in the market to the consumerscanitbeself-regulated. My point is let's not hurry this. Let us allow this thing to be debated more. Today we have 10 pc broadband penetration and about 30 pc internet penetration in India. Digital India and its goals need to be achieved by 2020. As industry all stakeholders whether it's us, OTT players or the device manufacturers, all of us need to concen- trate on Digital India dream. And for that we need to have at least 70-80 pc internet penetration, if not100pc,toseetherealeffectofDigitalIndia. For the level playing field, let see what are the regulations in telecom, retail, banking which have now been designed for today's scenario. These regulations have been designed looking at a 18TelecomLIVE October 2015

Digital India by CII

Pages Overview