Lost decade to India's Techade, telecom sector has come of age: Rajeev

NEW DELHI: Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, on Wednesday hit hard at the earlier UPA government and the sorry state of India’s telecom sector under the earlier regime, saying that there has been a sea change from the “lost decade under the UPA to the India Techade under the NDA regime” in the last 9-10 years.

Discussing some key points between the “lost decade and India's Techade”, the minister said that every rupee that has been gained from the auction of spectrum has gone to the public exchequer and has been deployed in the expanded social spending schemes of the government.

“In the India Techade, networks have much higher quality, telecom operators are incentivised and tasked with investing more and more in base stations and capacities in the wireless network. We’re the second fastest in terms of rolling out a 5G network in the world and over 700 districts already have 5G coverage,” he told the media here.

Over 500,000 5G base stations have already been rolled out in this cutting-edge technology, the minister added.

"About 83 crore Indians are connected to the Internet and we are the world's largest connected country and largest connected democracy. In 2014, this number was just a fraction. By 2025-26, we anticipate that 120 crore Indians will be connected to the Internet,” Chandrasekhar said.

Taking on the UPA government, he said that in the “lost decade,” we essentially talked only about scams in the telecom sector like the 2G scam.

“BSNL which was a $6 billion company in 2004 had become a loss-making company by 2014,” said the minister.

The other sharp difference is that in the “lost decade”, we were almost completely dependent on imports.

“Whether there was equipment for the network or for devices being used by the consumers, we were totally dependent on imports. Almost 100 per cent of the equipment was imported. Today 100 per cent of the devices are made/assembled in India and exports to other countries have also increased exponentially,” Chandrasekhar told reporters.

In India’s Techade, the telecom sector is playing a very important role in expanding the digital economy and leading us to a trillion dollar economy goal by 2026, he stressed.