“Ease Mergers and Acquisitions for Telecom Companies as too much competition is not keeping business viable” said Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala

Technology Evangelist of India, Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala from IIT Chennai advocated “Ease of Mergers and Acquisitions for Telecom Operators is required as too much competition has brought down prices but is no more keeping businesses viable” at the CII Conclave on Multidimentional Telecom Growth – Building and Enabling Information Infrastructure in New Delhi.

Dr Jhunjhunwala said “Broadband Infrastructure is needed to provide all kinds of services and fibre to all towers should be laid at the earliest”. He suggested that we should enable an environment that allows operators to share already auctioned spectrum without additional resource mobilisation on the part of the government.” He said “Although SMS services are being used well in India, the local language SMS should be brought for rural pick-up. Further, VAS has not been leveraged in the country and renewed focus on applications and VAS is required.” He also pushed for more product manufacturing and IPR creation in telecommunication and emphasised on support to entrepreneurs for nurturing and building required ecosystem.

Mr Sanjay Kapoor, Chairman of CII Telecom Committee & CEO, Bharti Airtel Ltd, India & South Asia said that “Telecom in India is turning to be an Essential Service that ensures smooth functioning of citizens’ daily lives and businesses, helping them become socially and financial inclusive and globally competitive.”. He added that “Telecom industry has impacted not only job creation with multiplier effect but has also brought scale sustainability in small and tiny entrepreneurial activities in the country. Home delivery is a thriving business model which rides solely on the telecom platform”. He said that telecom adds to business growth like telecom industry is selling more music than music industry collectively manages to sells on its own. In the future, multiple SIMs will be used to support multifarious application hitherto not imagined.

Mr Kapoor emphasised that “Financial Inclusion is a big and important agenda for India and telecom can work with banks & financial institutions in that direction. With Indian Telecom Industry’s ability to reach, scale and built-in affordability the same can be achieved faster.” He said that the “new regulations for inclusion of Business Correspondents provide huge opportunity for telecom sector to work with banks. Telecom can work as Quasi banks with 90-95% pre-paid subscribers with their ZERO bad debt to enhance financial delivery while best managing the cost of delivery.”

Mr Yao Weimin, Sr Vice President, Huawei Tecommunication India Ltd said “India jumped from dial-tone to info-tone and now to cloud computing with services and applications being delivering over the internet grid.” He emphasised “Organisations and industry can jointly help with Social Responsibility by delivering essential services to rural India like tele-medicine and e-education with applications that will make a difference to everyday life of people across the country.”