Indian telecom services among top three globally, says Scindia

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

He said more stringent norms for monitoring quality of service at cell level had 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 telecom operators had submitted first reports based on new norms, and discussions were on to resolve issues where their quality of service was not as per the benchmark.

Scindia said the government had 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 would 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) was 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.