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An industry veteran, writer, consultant and the director of Center for Telecom Management and Studies, Dr T H Chowdary has criticized Government, TRAI and DoT for the 2G spectrum auction. In a written response to 'VOICE & DATA' he commented that Government, TRAI and DoT acted with rapacity, and they abandoned the overall development of the telecom industry and the consumers interest. He said that the Government had a strong intent to raise money to resolve budgetary deficits.
According to Dr T H Chowdary, "It is as well that the 2G auction produced only a fraction of what the government hoped and wanted to raise from it. The auction was motivated not with the idea of making telecoms more affordable for more people but solely with the idea of raising money to cover the budgetary deficits of the government."
He further added, "The TRAI, the DOT and the government moved with greed. In telecom we are having hyper competition, the number of telcos in the field is the higher than anywhere in the world, telcos are sinking in the sea of debt of about Rs. 200,000 crore, only 3 or 4 companies were giving dividends and that too in the last few years; their profits are falling quarter after quarter and banks and financial institutions are shying from giving the telcos any loans. A little rise in prices made nearly 5 mln subscribers discontinue their subscription. Government ignored all these negative signals and thought that insighting companies to gamble is good for it. The happy and beneficent results of liberalization are being destroyed by government's greed to somehow raise monies."
Dr T Hanuman Chowdary initiated the restructuring of the DOT, first by its separation from the Posts and constituting the operations into corporations. He founded the Center for Telecommunications Management and Studies (CTMS), in 1989, as a not-for-profit-society to wage the intellectual campaign for demonopolisation of and competition in Indian telecoms. He wrote the draft National Telecom Policy (NTP), as early as in 1989. He has drafted an alternative Indian Telecom Law in 1992, to replace the Indian Telegraphs Act, 1885, and submitted it as an alternative report of the Government of India’s High Power Committee (of which he was a member) to amend the Indian Telegraph Act. He drafted the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Bill, which has become the basis for the final TRAI Act.
In his earlier stints, Dr T Hanuman Chowdary held various positions in both state and central government. He was a Consultant (1995) to the Government of South Africa for restructuring their telecoms and to the Government of Nepal (Y 2000) for its IT Policy; Chairman of the AP Electronics Development Corporation; a Member of the Prime Minister’s National Task Force for Information Technology (NTFIT)); IT Advisor to (since 1997) Government of Andhra Pradesh in the rank of Minister of state, from 1997-2004, ideating schemes of e-governance, computer education in schools, state wide Area Network, Public Internet Service Kiosks in villages and broadband for information of society; all-India President of Institution of Electronic & Telecommunication Engineers. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the IETE a fellow of the Institution of Engineers and a Senior Member of the IEEE (New York). He is Consultant and Advisor to a number of national and international telecom companies and financial institutions including TCS.