• India will be impacted by the generational shift from physical to digital : Smt Aruna Sundararajan, Chairperson, Telecom Commission and Secretary, Ministry of Communications.
New Delhi : The intelligent platform is a combination of Big Data, AI, Virtual Reality, etc. which are emerging and coming together. It will become far more powerful and influential as we move forward,” said Smt. Aruna Sundararajan, Chairperson, Telecom Commission and Secretary, Ministry of Communications, Government of India. She was speaking at the Broadband Summit 2018 – “Future-ready for all in India” organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry in partnership with Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, Department of Telecommunications, Government of India and the NITI Aayog on 10 May 2018.
The Secretary pointed out that India has only touched 30% broadband penetration, that too mainly on mobile, and has 70% of growth ahead. This makes the Government confident that India is the most robust growth market for digital communication in the medium to long term. The proposed National Digital Communication Policy aims to address the current level of stress and outlines strategies to enable the sector to consolidate in the short term and in the long term, to unleash fresh investment. The government recognizes that if this balance 70% growth is to be achieved then the players in this sector need light-touch licensing, ease of doing business, reduced burden of regulatory compliances, stable & predictable regulatory environment, and new institutional mechanisms.
The Secretary released a report “Broadband 2022 – Unlocking a trillion-dollar digital economy”.
Mr Kiran Karnik, Chairman, CII National Committee on Telecom and Broadband, pointed out that India already has approximately 370 million internet connections on mobile and a few million more which are not mobile based. This is expected to double in the next two to three years to cross the 700 million mark. With rising broadband connectivity, new technologies, and the introduction of the new policy, Broadband is likely to see tremendous growth in the country.
