Digital communication is today's critical infrastructure requirement

There is an urgent need for policies to establish telecommunications through wireless given the high cost of installing fiber

Digitization and digital communication are critical infrastructure needs in India, including transport and energy. From the policies and other announcements related to digitization, it can be inferred that the government prioritizes these sectors. India prides itself on its strength in this sector but it is not reflected in the ground reality of expenditure on this sector, its policies and actual reforms etc. Many of the immediate needs are not for government funding but for timely and appropriate policy responses.

If we look at the expenditure on road, rail and communication in the revised figures for 2022, the expenditure on road and rail was double the expenditure on communication. A small increase has been made for communication in the next year as well. Rs. 1.23 lakh crore to BSNL Rs. 52,937 crore while the rest of the telecom companies got Rs. 44,642 crore and postal project Rs. 25,814 crore was received.

The fact is emphasized that digitization and communication are indeed of utmost importance. So the question is whether the mentioned amount is not less? Driving economy and productivity growth, tackling climate change, living conditions and digital influence and capabilities need to be prioritized over and above the mix of technology, capital, land and human resources.

What would have happened if the government had taken proper action regarding AGR and past applicable taxes in time? In this market of more than a billion customers, there are probably three strong service providers. Another area is wireless policy and optical fiber.

Rating firm Icra recently said that an investment of around three lakh crore rupees will be required to start using 5G services on a full-time basis across the country. This is because almost two-thirds of the towers do not have fiber connectivity. Heavy investment is not likely as telecom companies by March 2023 will spend Rs. 6.3 lakh crore debt is expected.

Given the high cost of fiber and land difficulties in installation, it is surprising that our policy makers in the Department of Telecom have never understood the urgent need to formulate wireless policies even for towers. While such successful models exist in other countries.

The Department of Telecom introduced wireless enabling regulations for 5GHz in October 2018. However, after regulation, no step forward in this direction has been seen. In this case, bridging the gap between different gigahertz frequencies would be too expensive due to the high cost of fiber optic cables. However, many officials talked about providing fiber communication to all. However, given our country's size, population distribution and expenditure-income structure, one may find this impractical.