Indian telecom services export has increased 15.4 percent during the first half of fiscal 2016, according to India Government’s Economic Survey report released today ahead of Union Budget.
Incidentally, the export of telecom services fell 22.2 percent in H1 2014-15 and dipped 17.1 percent during 2014-15 to $2 billion.
Telecom subscriber base – wireline and wireless – is expected to reach 1035.2 million in 2015-16 from 964.2 million in 2014-15.
The report said FDI in telecom was $1062.91 million during April to November 2015 against $2894.94 million during fiscal 2015.
Economic Survey said growth of telecom is one of the key drivers of socio-economic development. The performance of the telecommunications sector during 2015-16 has been encouraging, with approximately 33.4 million new telephone connections added during April to October 2015 against 29.65 million in the corresponding period of 2014-15.
Overall tele density India has increased from 79.4 per cent at the beginning of the financial year to 81.5 percent at the end of October 2015, while total broadband connections have touched 120.9 million till September 2015.
Economic Survey noted that India realized Rs 109,874 crore or 67.8 percent more than the value of the allocated spectrum at reserve price during the March 2015 spectrum auction. Collection of spectrum usage charges during 2015-16 up to November 2015 was Rs 5,568 crore. Department of Telecommunications (DoT) conducted spectrum auction in March 2015 to sell 470.75 MHz spectrum in 2100 MHz, 1800 MHz, 900 MHz and 800 MHz bands.
India has prepared machine to machine communication (M2M) roadmap putting together various standards, policy and regulatory requirements and approach for the industry on how to look ahead to M2M.
BharatNet / National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project will connect approximately 2.5 lakh gram panchayats in the country through optical fiber. As on 30 November 2015, 103,643 km of pipes and 74,994 km of optical fiber cables (OFC) have been laid. Further, OFC has been laid in 32,049 gram panchayats.
As on October 31, 2014, 6,35,929 broadband connections have been provided and 14,653 kiosks have been set up under the Rural Wireline Broadband scheme in rural and remote areas.
In the telecom sector, the introduction of 4G which could be a game changer and inclusion of fiber optic connectivity will increase the reach and bandwidth, according to India’s Economic Survey for 2015-16.
Vina Krishnan
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