Indian telecom services among top 3 globally, efforts on to make them better: Scindia

Indian telecom services are among the top three globally and efforts are on to further improve them, Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said on Friday.

He said that more stringent norms for monitoring quality of service at cell level have been put in place from October 1.

''It will not be an exaggeration to say that Indian telecom services are among top 3 nations and our efforts are on to improve them further,'' the minister said.

Telecom regulator Trai has implemented norms that were used to measure quality of services at circle level to cell level.

The minister said that telecom operators have submitted first reports based on new norms, and discussions are on to resolve issues where their quality of service is not as per the benchmark.

Scindia said the government has de-licensed lower frequency range in 6 Ghz band spectrum for improving proliferation of Wi-Fi. With this move, companies using certain frequencies in the 6Ghz band will not need to pay for the radiowaves.

Signals transmitted in these frequency bands are considered to support ultra low latency, higher speed and lower cost of digital services.

The minister said the committee of secretaries (CoS) is looking at spectrum refarming 2.0 to meet the requirement of telecom services.

''Close to 687 Mhz from defence and other sectors has been given to the telecom sector under the re-farm umbrella. We require 2000 Mhz by 2030. We already have 900 Mhz, add to it 687 Mhz, so we have 1587 Mhz and we need another 432 Mhz. CoS is looking at refarming 432 Mhz,'' Scindia said.

The minister said that satcom service is under work and it will be finalised once recommendations from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is received.

While Trai has already given its recommendation, the Department of Telecom is in process of seeking some clarification from the regulator.

Scindia said that the government has accelerated processes to resolve telecom network roll-out in the country.

''Out of 2,415 issues from February till today, we have completed 1,882 issues. Almost 86 per cent of the pain point have been resolved. There is a pendency of 533 issues, on which we are working with the state governments,'' Scindia said.

In response to a question on a GSMA report which claimed that only 47 per cent Indians are connected, the minister said that the report is on those who are not using smartphones.

He said that there are several mobile phone companies that are coming with low-cost handsets, which will gradually address the gap.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)