India needs reliable,robust broadband connectivity infrastructure for transformational growth of telecom sector: TRAI

NEW DELHI: Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Chairman RS Sharma said that the need for a reliable and robust broadband connectivity infrastructure for a transformational growth of the telecom sector in India. With its low internet and broadband penetration India is at the 131st position in the UN ranking, way behind countries like Sri Lanka.

Delivering his keynote address on the theme ‘Assessing Future Trends and Regulatory Reforms of Telecom Sector’ at the India Telecom 2016 organized by Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications,
and FICCI Sharma said that TRAI as a regulatory body will continue to play the role of a facilitator to the industry.

He added that for an orderly growth of the sector it is necessary to have a clear regulatory framework with no scope of ambiguities.

Elaborating on ‘Digital India’, Sharma said that to achieve the goal of the initiative which is to connect India digitally there are three pre-requisites namely, digital infrastructure, software and digital services; and digitally empowered citizens. He added that digital infrastructure consisted of hardline infrastructure, which included broadband and networks, and soft infrastructure, comprising e-payment gateways.

Sharma said that Digital India initiative was focused on empowering people by providing services such as DigiLocker which is linked to the Unique Identification Authority of India (Aadhaar number) of the user. The space can be utilized for storing personal documents and there is also an associated facility for e-signing documents. The service is intended to minimize the use of physical documents and to provide authenticity of the e-documents. Such programs are helping in the creation of an India which has paperless, transparent, traceable, cost effective and cashless governance.

Sharma said that India is now moving towards data from voice calls. The country is ready for this change with adequate spectrum; however, there are several challenges in this domain in terms of privacy and ownership of data, which have to be addressed. Hence, a regulatory framework was needed to resolve these issues.

Speaking on M2M, Sharma said that for successful M2M implementation it was essential that systems were interoperable with open APIs (application programming interface). Also platforms were needed that allow plug and play and plug-in and plug-out, to avoid a situation of vendor lock-in.