INDIA TELECOM

Hon’ble Prime Minister inaugurated the 8th International Conference India Telecom - 2013 with the lighting of Lamps. On this occasion he released the India Telecom Report - 2013 and delivered inaugural speech. Dr. Singh addressed the audience with the words on digital divide between the rural and urban areas of India. He said that nearly 50,000 villages are still uncovered by mobile and internet connectivity. In his speech he urged private telecom companies to take initiatives and bridge the digital divide between the rural and urban areas. He discussed the initiatives taken by the Department of Telecommunication (DoT), Govt. of India on merger and acquisition policies. He said that currently mobile to human communication are present in wide part of India but now the time is for the machine to machine (M2M) communication and the place where internet connectivity is present has the major problem of speed. He focused on 3G internet connectivity, which can help the students of rural areas, who can study through online video lectures uploaded by experienced and good teachers without leaving their homes.

Mr. Kapil Sibal discussed the government policies (NTP-2012) regarding bridging the rural and urban digital divide gap. He discussed the primary objective of NTP 2012 that is to maximize public goods by making available affordable, reliable and secure telecommunications and broad band services across the entire country. He also emphasized that during the two days of conference, some good discussions will be done among the expert panelist from industries and DoT, Govt. of India.

After the inaugural session, conference started at 11:30 AM. The complete 2 days conference was divided in six different sessions. Every session was chaired by different panelists on different issues related to the conference theme. The issues which have been discussed on 5th and 6th December are given below:

Realizing the benefits of M2M, Smart Cities and The Internet of Things: In this session, the key benefits of M2M services like reduced operational costs, improved supply chain efficiency, and improved customer satisfaction were discussed. It was said that M2M roaming is a big challenge but initiative has been taken by the Reliance industry.

Enabling policy framework for next phase of telecom revolution: Mr. Anil Kaushal, chairperson of this session said that each and every person have to take initiative regarding the policy framework to improve the quality life of society. It is not just the duty of government of India to issue directives to solve the problems, states will also have to play major roles to improve and control the things for next phase of telecom revolution.

Convergence of network, services & devices: Regulatory & Policy framework: Mr. Rahul Khullar, chairperson of the session said that Level of services and security is very low in the current scenario. Convergence is not only important but it is inevitable for the betterment of society. If we are talking about the convergence, we have to take care of bandwidth.

Towards a New Digital enablement: Chairperson of the session focused on a new digital enablement, to check the e-literacy throughout the country. Since level of e-literacy is different in different states, we have to set a minimum level of parameters for the new digital enablement.

Smart Devices and applications: For M2M services, application based smart devices should be manufactured, because when Machine to Machine interaction will be done security of the data will be the major concern.

Power the Tower: During this session, problems and challenges faced by the tower companies was discussed. To reduce the cost of power different alternate sources like green power and fuel cells were discussed.

The conference ended with the conclusion that India Telecom sector will have to play major role in GDP growth of India and future of communication will be “Internet of people to internet of things.”