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Indian Telecom 2006 held at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, was organized by the Department of Telecom, Ministry of Communication and IT in association with TEMA and FICCI to highlight and brainstorm prevalent issues of the ever expanding telecom industry in the country and chart its future growth. On the inaugural day of the two-day event, the hon'ble president, APJ Abdul Kalam, addressing the august gathering of the industry stakeholders, stressed the need to discuss issues of invasion of privacy and ethics of utilization of telecom tools and technologies. He said, "Connectivity was the key to transformation of billion people into members of knowledge society. Connectivity for the billion people is the connectivity of the planet, which means connecting 6,00,000 villages and bringing 700 mn people to the 300 mn people living in urban."

Connecting the Masses
Speaking on PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas), he stated that the Village Knowledge Centers (VKC) would be the key frontline delivery system for providing the knowledge connectivity to the PURA complexes. He also mentioned that transformation of data into user-friendly information on a regular basis was the real challenge and that the VKCs should focus on rural development and youth empowerment. He appreciated the Ministry of Communication and IT for its efforts to establish 100,000 Common Services Centers, which will become part of PURA knowledge connectivity.

In his keynote address, hon'ble minister for communications and IT, Dayanidhi Maran, emphasized on the importance of taking technology to masses in order to achieve growth with equity and sustainability. He stated that the present government's decision to provide support from USO fund for mobile telephony and broadband services is going to open vast untapped markets in rural areas. "In fact, we are christening the year 2007 as The Year of Broadband in India", Maran said. He added that with the USO scheme for coverage of rural areas and intense coverage through WiMAX, the DoT is expected to start adding more than one million broadband connections per month before the end of 2007. He mentioned that the government made consistent efforts to create an ecosystem by investing $17 bn in IT and telecom sector. "It is expected that fresh commitment of about $2 bn will happen in the telecom manufacturing alone in the next one year or so. This would be further enhanced to $20 bn by the year 2010 creating more jobs, contributing to GDP, revenue etc," Maran said.

In his welcome address, N Srinivasan, vice president, FICCI, said that the Indian telecom industry was on high trajectory with over 183 mn mobile subscribers in the country today. This rapid growth has been possible due to various proactive and positive decisions of the government and contribution both by public and private sector.

Expansion Dream
In the CEO Roundtable held later on that day, Maran released the vision statement, Vision 2010-a 10-point program. The first on the list is network expansion where the minister has kept the optimistic target to have 250 mn telephone connections by 2007 and by 2010 the aim is to have 500 mn mobiles. He said that by 2007 there will be 85% mobile coverage in the country and by 2010 it will be 90%.

The second objective of this 10-point program is connecting the unconnected, here that vision statement aims to have 50 mn rural connections by 2007 and 80 mn by 2010. The vision aspires to reduce the rural urban divide from present 25:1 to 5:1 by 2010. Third comes the much talked about broadband coverage and the goal is to take number of broadband connections in India to 9 mn. He hoped that higher secondary schools, public health institutions and panchayats would have broadband connections by 2008. The vision for infrastructure sharing is that with the support from the USO fund for mobile telephony as well as broadband the vision is to have 8,000 towers by 2007 in rural areas and 10,000 or more by 2010. The vision also talks of increasing the sharing in urban areas from present 25% to 40% by 2007 and 70% by 2010.

Making India the WiMax Leader
On the issue of 3G mobile services and WiMAX, the vision aims to introduce the policy by 2007 and to make India a leader in introducing WiMAX technology. The sixth vision statement on introduction and spread of IPTV and mobile TV aims to see IPTV in 70 towns by 2007 and 600 towns by 2010 and mobile TV in 20 cities in 2007.

Another focus is on manufacturing, where the aim is to make a telecom-manufacturing hub. The growth target till 2010 is kept at a whooping $20 bn. Steps will be taken to double the production by 2007 and quadruple it by 2010. And, with regard to R&D, emphasis was laid on making India prominent in providing technology solution and the vision aims to bring affordable technology to masses and develop a comprehensive security infrastructure for telecom network, tested infrastructure for enabling interoperability in NGN and doubling telecom equipment R&D by 2010 from present level of 10%. International bandwidth vision encompasses the objective to facilitate the availability of adequate international bandwidth at competitive prices to drive ITES sector at faster growth. The last aspect of the vision statement is focused on promoting fair and just competition with consumer focus and promoting collaboration in public-private partnership mode.

The representatives and market leaders of all the stakeholders of the telecom industry attended the CEO roundtable with the IT minister. The second day had a series of discussions on regulatory, technological and business related issues of the telecom industry. The first session was on regulatory and policy imperative chaired by Nripendra Misra, chairperson of TRAI. It discussed issues related to the role of regulators, convergence, providing level playing field for all the players, de-regularization, spectrum and quality of service. The second session chaired by Nasscom president Kiran Karnik deliberated on the issues pertaining to content application and regulation in the era of convergence. The session discussed the role of wireless in broadband, monetizing the third screen, next generation networks and status of broadband in the era of convergence.

Telecom and Economy
The final session was on innovation and telecom equipment manufacturing chaired by Dr V Krishnamurthy, chairman, National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council. The discussion focused on the economic performance of the country, contribution of the manufacturing sector to the GDP and the priority of telecom in the manufacturing.

India Telecom 2006 was the first event in the history of the telecom industry, and the government aims to make it a flagship event of the telecom sector in the coming years. The event ended with hopes that this event, with rich inputs availed from national and international speakers, will bring out useful recommendations for policy makers.

Sonia Sharma
sonias@cybermedia.co.in