Telecom on hold

A victim of trust deficit.

State-owned telecom operator BSNL’s complaint that the sector regulator’s recommendations harm the company and favour private operators tells, together with the PMO directive transferring all decision-making on spectrum and licensing matters to an empowered group of ministers, a sorry tale of vital infrastructure being undermined by poor regulation and policymaking.

This must change. BSNL and MTNL deserve neither discrimination nor patronage. They essentially need operational freedom. BSNL has been prevented from buying telecom equipment to expand capacity since 2007, resulting in serious loss of market share and revenue for the company and effective competition and telecom penetration in rural areas.

Nor does it make sense for the government to try and prove that it is on the side of its own company by suggesting that it waive spectrum charges for the state-owned telco. That would distort the playing field in yet another fashion.
    
While there has been much attention on the money mobilised by the government from its spectrum auctions, the real purpose of making that spectrum available for telecom has been neglected. High-speed data connectivity for everyone should be the goal for any sensible policymaker.

After the French Supreme Court ruled that broadband access is a fundamental right, Finland has now given broadband access the status of a legal right.

The US has a national broadband plan that envisages at least 100 Megabits per second of download speed and at least 50 Megabits per second of upload speed per household, and intends to make at least 500 MHz of spectrum available for the purpose over the next 10 years.

Private players like Google talk of providing broadband access at 1 Gigabits per second. If, in India, the government scuppers utilisation of even the existing spectrum for rollout of wireless broadband through mindless levies on telecom companies, it would hurt not just telcos, but the economy as well. For, broadband would be the cutting-edge enabler of innovation across all sectors in the near future.