Telecom should not be seen as a means to bridge fiscal deficit: TV Ramachandran

Telecom should not be seen as a means to bridge fiscal deficit or as a direct revenue spinner through high spectrum charges and licence fees, said TV Ramachandran, President of Broadband India Forum, in an interaction with ET.

“By imposing high auction fees, licence fees, spectrum charges, the operators are being left with less money for rolling out their network. We should not milk the telecom sector dry,” added Ramachandran.

India’s telecom sector is currently dealing with a lot of challenges which can be overcome by the means of a good new telecom policy which the ministry is currently working on. “The growth of telecom infrastructure is getting stifled by certain factors which include regulatory challenges,” he said.

According to Ramachandran, the ability to roll out digital infrastructure by way of OFC, towers, is not happening seamlessly and regulatory has to take care of hurdles involved in the process.

“In India one of our biggest challenges is that the fibre is not cost effective and satellite bandwidth is available readily but is going waste all over the country. With the NTP, we have to provide a solution for this,” he added.

Also, he pointed that in India we need right quality spectrum at affordable rates since the capital with telcos is limited. The spectrum auctions despite being transparent can be designed for any end result, he explained.

Telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan had recently said that there are regulatory challenges, and the industry is expecting the challenges to be addressed by the new telecom policy.

The new telecom policy draft is expected to be ready by December and effective by March 2018. The policy will focus on next generation technologies such as 5G and the Internet of Things, skill development and security, among others.

Also, the Department of Telecom (DoT) is expected to soon write to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) seeking inputs for the new telecom policy.