Ashwini Vaishnaw, Telecom Minister at DIPA Annual Flagship Event 2022

The highlights of Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics and Information Technology’s address at the Digital Infrastructure Providers Association (DIPA) event on Gati Shakti Vision for 5G and Beyond:

In line with PM’s firm vision, the task given to us was that the telecom regulatory framework must be world class, a tough task indeed! We are partnering with the industry for any reforms needed, and will continue to do so.

• After three reforms rolled out since last year, the fourth reform will the new Telecom Bill, the draft of which will be put up for public consultation by end of next week , with licensing reforms to follow.
• The new Telecom Bill will provide legal backing to the right of way rules rolled out earlier this year, including legal framework for the Building Code.
• Two weeks back, the Prime Minister approved the railway land lease policy. Related to telecom, for every OFC crossing a railway track, PM approved a flat charge of Rs 1000 (as against the calculation of current land value of the area earlier), to be on a totally digital portal, integrated with the RoW portal. Target given to railway officers is, it should be not more than one week of approval time, it should be purely digital approval, with no human intervention required.
• Power consumption in towers is a big issue. Industry must come up with a good sustainable solution. We want to partner with you, use more renewable energy, introduce green hydrogen, or any other solution to reduce carbon footprint.
• Journey of 5G is poised be very exciting. While many countries took multiple years to reach 40-50 percent coverage, we are targeting a very, very aggressive timeline. We should definitely have at least 80 percent 5G coverage in a very short time frame. That’s the target we have given to the industry. And industry will be coming up with their internal workings very soon. And we should be able to make that difference in common citizen’s life , by providing a high quality digital service. The Role of DIPA will be very important, and I urge you to send us recommendations, new thoughts. Wherever any regulation needs to be simplified , we are always a game for that. Tower permissions and SACFA clearances simplification is testimonial to this. Now, time for more such reforms.
• Next week, I will be requesting the department to send a request to TRAI for a new consultation paper to try to significantly increase the quality of service parameters, almost making 3x or 4x of what it is. So, that whatever is the quality of service that we are seeing today should now improve significantly. We have given a target to our field officers to go around and check quality of services (QoS), and pull up the telecom service providers, wherever need be. Please go full steam ahead to improve QoS. PM is constantly reviewing every part of this sector. Now it’s up to the telecom service providers infrastructure providers, the software people, the technology people, the use case developers, to all the people who are connected as stakeholders to come up with better quality of service.

CT Bureau