Telecom Industry has been cash crunched as the telco giants are facing trouble paying their AGR dues. Currently, India is planning to provide universal access to broadband by the end of 2022. However, Industry feels that telecom infrastructure advancement would require an immediate policy implementation to overcome the current cash crunch situation, which would fulfil India’s plan to set up global broadband networks by 2022. As per the investment figures of 2019, the Universe Service obligation Fund (USOF) which is a national reserve to fund telecom infrastructure invested Rs 70,000 crore out of the giant Rs 7 lakh crore unveiled by the centre for broadband connectivity.
Government Plans to Add Fibre Footprints
As per the words of Tilak Raj Dua “India needs to install more than 1,00,000 towers in order to provide quality services to billion customers.” Currently, 16 out of 36 states and union territories have matched their policies with Centre’s Right-of-way (RoW) 2016 norms. To ensure global connectivity, the government is also planning to increase fibre footprints by nearly 7.5 kilometres by 2022.
Also, the BJP led government is planning to fiberise 60 % of the telecom towers by the end of 2022. In the context, Tilak Raj Dua also marked that availability of robust telecom infrastructure would ensure seamless connectivity and availability of broadband to masses. To provide better connectivity and sustainable broadband future, national policy is planning to offer universal broadband connectivity at 50 Mbps to every person by 2022. This news is reported by ET Telecom first.
DoT has Developed Broadband Readiness Index (BRI)
DoT has recently developed a Broadband Readiness Index (BRI) which will measure the availability of digital communications infrastructure and policy environment in sales. As per Sandeep Aggarwal who is the chairman of the telecom committee “government should give various incentives to tower firms and telcos to connect 100 % radios on their towers. Not only this, the government must invest in building 6 lakh kilometres per annum of OFC and requisite towers through BSNL”.
Peter Reichle who is the co-owner and member of Board of directors at Reichle Holdings (R&M) noted that “India is going to have a huge demand for fibre optic infrastructure driven by BharatNet and FTTH in the coming 3 to 4 years”.
Government is also planning to set up a digital fibre map of the digital communications network and infrastructure, including optical fibre cables and mobile towers.
