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Get ready for the next big wave

Get ready for the next big wave, A light-touch regulatory approach with lower taxation will help India script the telecom success story.

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A light-touch regulatory approach with lower taxation will help India script the telecom success story for the next 25 years.

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Ravinder Takkar

By Ravinder Takkar

“It always seems impossible until it’s done”

- Nelson Mandela

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When the first mobile phone call was made in India 25 years ago – at a time when getting a fixed-line connection was an achievement – it was unimaginable that it would engineer India’s biggest socio-economic revolution since Independence.

We have come a long way since then. Today, India is the second largest-telecom market and the largest data consumer, globally. With 1.2 billion Indians accessing voice and data services at the world’s lowest tariffs across five lakh villages, the ubiquitous wireless network in India is unmatched for its reach and impact on people’s lives.

The telecom sector including all ecosystem players, contribute nearly 6.5% to India’s GDP.  Operators alone contribute Rs 58,000 crore per annum to the government exchequer.

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Private investment driving economic growth

Telecom in India attracted one of the highest FDI in the last two decades. Vodafone Group did the single largest FDI bringing world-class technology and services to customers. Several other foreign players entered with huge investments but could not sustain for long in the hyper-competitive market.

Over the last 25 years, Vodafone Idea (VIL) alone has made an investment of over Rs three lakh crore, two-thirds of this being in equity. With an investment of over Rs 11.24 lakh crore – the second largest investment in private infrastructure – VIL has set up the world’s biggest telecom network infrastructure comprising of over 22 lakh BTS’, enabling economic growth at an unprecedented scale during the last two decades.

After making 2G services available to Indians even in areas where basic services such as power and healthcare were unavailable, the Indian telecom industry made huge investments in developing digital highways, bringing the power of the internet in the hands of half a billion Indians.

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Meeting needs of data-hungry Indians

Telecom operators have spent over Rs 3.68 lakh crore to buy spectrum through auctions since 2010 to cater to the data-hungry nation. Investments in setting up pan-India broadband networks – 3G and 4G brought about the next wave of the data revolution in the last decade. The telecom operators' effort to rapidly expand 4G services across India, which was further catalyzed by the push from NDCP 2018, has led to 600 million smartphone users consuming data at the rate of 12 GB per subscriber per month.

Digital communication is now not just driving connectivity, social networking, and entertainment, but has also become the most powerful tool in the hands of every individual and business.

While offering the world’s lowest-priced data at an average of USD 0.26 per GB in India, as compared to USD 6.66 in the UK and USD 12.37 for a GB in the US, investments by operators in broadband networks have also resulted in higher data speeds for users. This led to India registering the highest data growth in the world with mobile data traffic doubling in the last three years, setting the stage for a digital revolution in the country.

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Digital communication is now not just driving connectivity, social networking, and entertainment, but has also become the most powerful tool in the hands of every individual and business.

Realizing the Digital India dream

The new Digital India is a vision of a connected India and empowers millions of people with access to real-time information, avenues for commerce, and an enhanced quality of life. It is the enabler for the ‘Future Connected India’. Be it smart cities, machine-to-machine (M2M), internet of thing (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), connected cars, or robotics – telecom has the established ability to deliver a multiplier effect on the growth of the economy and employment in India.

JAM – Jan Dhan, Aadhar, and mobile – one of the biggest financial inclusion and governance programs of the Government of India leverages the deep rural connectivity and mobile penetration. Digital technology deployments in the areas of agriculture, healthcare, rural banking, UPI, government subsidies, and distribution, have already demonstrated the impact on rural development.

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Powered by mobile technology, Vodafone Idea’s transformative CSR projects in the domains of education, financial literacy, preventive healthcare, women empowerment, and livelihood are strong indicators on how technology can be used to close the gap in learning outcomes of students, improving access to education, making available affordable diagnostic tests in areas where proper healthcare facilities are not available.

With this new normal, telecom will continue to be the lifeline of India enabling other sectors of the economy to grow and thrive.

Our recent initiative in the field of agriculture shows how technology can be used to improve agriculture practices, farm yield, revenues, and overall quality of life for farmers.

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I believe just as the telecom industry has played an instrumental role in catapulting India to the top five economies of the world, going forward it will be the enabler of India’s trillion-dollar digital economy dream by 2025.

I feel honoured to lead the company which has been at the forefront of this revolution right from the beginning. In their various avatars since the mid-1990s, Vodafone and Idea steered the growth of the sector for over two decades and came together as a merged entity in 2018 to become a leading telecom player in the country. Separately and together, both the companies have set new benchmarks in network experience, rural connectivity, customer service, enterprise mobility solutions, and more recently created history by accomplishing the world’s largest network integration in record time.

With spectrum consolidation and deployment of the latest 5G ready technologies such as m-MIMO, DSR, Cloud, OpenRAN, and others, VIL has become the fastest 4G network in many markets including the metros. With a robust, future-ready network, the company has moved beyond being a “Connectivity Provider” to being a “Platform for the Digital Society”.

VIL solutions help customers not just to connect with their loved ones, but also gain a livelihood, infotainment, transact, learn online and avail remote healthcare services. Our secure enterprise solutions enhance business productivity. Electric smart meters, bank ATMs, retail vending machines, connected cars, smartwatches, and many more essential services are running on Vodafone Idea’s IoT solutions. Soon we will see a rapid proliferation of drone-based services in the supply chain, agriculture, surveillance, and others.

The pandemic has created a digital thrust as never before. We witnessed the impact of this changing digital behaviour which led to a year’s worth of traffic growth in the first week of lockdown in India. In addition to VIL’s strong network presence and enhanced capacities, our digital platforms and contact-less services enabled customers to remain connected during this period.

With this new normal, telecom will continue to be the lifeline of India enabling other sectors of the economy to grow and thrive.

Are we 5G ready?

There will be a major impetus for the growth of the digital economy through 5G technology, which, in turn, will give a major push to the adoption of IoT in India. The future will be driven by new technological developments such as AI, machine learning, and blockchain, enabling massive amounts of data to be collected from remote and mobile sensors. AI alone has the potential to add approximately USD one trillion to India’s economy by 2035.

In this scenario, data privacy assumes huge significance. I am hopeful that India’s own Personal Data Protection Bill 2019, which is currently before the Joint Parliamentary Committee, will address data privacy in a holistic manner and takes a balanced approach in ensuring data protection and security; facilitate innovation; and also offers practical provisions on cross border transfer of data.

As we move into the new era, we need to ensure that the industry is financially robust to invest and accelerate the achievement of the Digital India vision. A light-touch regulatory approach with lower taxation will help script India’s success story for the next 25 years. I am sure that as in the past, the policymaker, regulator, and the industry will collaborate and work towards the goal of realizing the new Digital India dream.

The future is exciting and we are ready!

The author Ravinder Takkar is the Managing Director and CEO of Vodafone Idea Limited

feedbackvnd@cybermedia.co.in

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