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Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Varun Kashyap & Sridevi Reddy
Co-Founders, Zithara.ai
Transforming Indian Offline Retail and Customer Engagement Using AI
The year 2019 has been a very happening one for the Indian Telecom industry. This was a year full of ups and downs and many waves. The telecom operators were mostly locked in a battle for the large part of the year, and the effects of the data tariff war definitely spawned in the entire industry. The future of the telecom industry was also decided somewhat in this year with a lot of major decisions being taken by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). The fate of the 5G auctions, when the 5G network would come to India and other significant decisions also defined the telecom industry this year. Let’s take a look at all the major milestones that happened this year and were crucial to the telecom sector.
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AGR Issue for Telecom Companies
Although the AGR decision by the Supreme Court only came into headlines towards the end of the year, it was the biggest blow that the telecom companies received. Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel were the companies which got the worst share of this blow. The Supreme Court mounted these two companies with dues worth Rs 90,000 crore and the entire telecom industry with dues worth Rs 1.4 lakh crore. The AGR issue snowballed for the telecom companies since now the SC ordered to include non-core services as well while reporting the AGR. Now the telecom companies have the pressure of paying this amount before January-end. However, the fate of Vodafone Idea also depends on whether or not it would be able to pay its dues. Meanwhile, Airtel has decided to raise funds to pay off its dues.
Delay in 5G Auction
The 5G Auction was supposed to be held in 2019, but with the year ending now, still, there is no 5G auction in sight. However, as per the DoT, the 5G Auction is to be held in March 2020. But, given the grim financial condition of the industry, there is little to no hope about the participation of the telecom companies in the 5G Auction. Also, before it was predicted that in 2020, 5G would make its way to India, but now the estimates peg that the technology might not really make its way to the country before 2023 and a commercial rollout only seems possible by 2025 only.
