Ericsson India head Chris Houghton said telecom operators will need access to more spectrum and will need to invest in new network capabilities to bridge the digital divide.
India government is gearing up to spectrum auction in February 2015 to meet its budgetary needs. TRAI has already recommended its spectrum pricing. But telecom operators such as Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, etc. are looking for adequate spectrum to improve customer experience this time.
The spectrum auction is happening at a time when there’s less clarity on future roadmap for release of spectrum. India is currently struggling with poor quality broadband network and lack of coverage across the country.
Interestingly, Indian operator like Idea Cellular invests slightly above half a billion dollar towards Capex (capital spending) against the Capex of nearly $18 billion by American wireless carrier AT&T in the U.S. Idea Cellular is the third largest telecom operator in India and is supported by business group Aditya Birla.
“Mobile broadband will be the platform on which the Digital India vision can be delivered. Wide deployment, availability and affordability of broadband will enable the country to bridge the digital divide and facilitate economic growth,” said Houghton.
Houghton, speaking at an event “India: Broadband for All” organized by Ericsson and COAI in New Delhi on December 18, said the mobile broadband infrastructure in India needs to be expanded on the back of a broad based 3G roll out, 4G introduction and preparedness for 5G.
Rajan Mathews, director general, COAI
The policy framework must ensure that operators are encouraged and have business case to invest in the networks so that services like commerce, banking, education, health and entertainment can be reliably delivered to large masses of India.
Ulf Pehrsson, head of Government & Industry Relations, Ericsson
Even as a policy of minimal regulations is encouraged to ensure innovation, consistency in policy is a necessary building block to encourage investment by operators.
Some of the global best practices that India could consider for implementation could be harmonized global spectrum that is wide, contiguous and in both low and high frequency bands; fair and non-discriminating regulation; network cooperation on commercial rather than regulated terms and network licenses that are neither service nor technology-specific.
Mobile broadband has become a platform for innovation which is creating new revenue streams. To achieve high level of broadband penetration and deliver the benefits of digitalization, additional spectrum would need to be made available in India.
Spectrum is the basic resource required for building efficient networks able to serve large numbers of subscribers generating large amounts of traffic. India must think long term in terms of laying out its national broadband policy so that supply side constraints are managed in such a manner that 600 million broadband subscribers can be serviced by 2020.
Baburajan K
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