The Indian telecom sector has been in the news a lot over the past few years for all the wrong reasons. The 2G scam that surfaced during the UPA led government delivered a huge set back to the telecom sector due to the Supreme court verdict cancelling 122 telecom licences which led to companies like Etisalat and Batelco to quit the Indian market.

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Also the regulatory uncertainties have prevented foreign companies from looking at India as a viable investment destination in spite of being the world’s second largest telecom market by subscriber base. It is the retrospective changes in policy and fear of litigation and lack of security of investment that has prevented foreign operators from raising their stakes in their Indian joint ventures even after the FDI in telecom was raised to 100% last year, companies like Russia’s Systema and Norway’s Telenor have yet not raised their holding to 100%.

Other issues that have plagued the telecom sector is the lack of transparency in the Merger and acquisition policy and spectrum trading, under the UPA led government a huge quantum of valuable spectrum in 700,800,900,1800,1200 MHz bands was kept unauctioned for no reason, which created a false spectrum scarcity and effected the quality of services.

In a recent press statement the new telecom minister Mr. Ravi Shankar Prasad has addressed all these issues and has promised to bring reforms in all of these aspects to ensure an overall better health of the telecom sector that benefits both the operators and the consumers. The key points from the press statement are mentioned below-