Ram Sewak Sharma, chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)

The government has initiated the ambitious Digital India programme, which aims at transforming the country into a digitally empowered knowledge economy. The programme encompasses various initiatives such as BharatNet, digital locker and e-governance. At a recent conference, “Broadband for All”, organised by the Cellular Operators Association of India and Ericsson, Ram Sewak Sharma, chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), talked about the various attributes of the Digital India programme, the importance of providing affordable broadband services to citizens and the various mechanisms necessary for achieving the same. Excerpts from his address…

India now has more than 1 billion mobile phone connections. With a population of around 1.2 billion, this means that most citizens now have a mobile phone. Further, smartphone sales are growing at the rate of 25 million per quarter. Mobiles phones are gradually becoming tools of empowerment.

Another remarkable fact is that India has some of the most affordable mobile tariffs in the world. When we commenced our services in 1995, the outgoing call rates were Rs 16 per minute and even incoming calls were chargeable. Today, the average charge for an outgoing call is less than Re 0.50 per minute while incoming calls have become free. Moreover, the average top-up is worth Rs 10. Indian telecom operators have been successful in sustaining such low tariffs.

The sustainability of low tariffs also implies that operators will be able to successfully operate their payments banks. While a transaction of Rs 100 through an ATM entails an additional charge of Rs 20 or Rs 45 from a bank, Indian telecom operators have the potential to transact amounts as small as Rs 10 at a much lower cost. Fru­ga­lity is the base of the pyramid on which the entire digital banking system will rest.

Digital India

Around one and a half years back, when the new government came to power, I was the IT secretary, and my department was instructed to craft a programme for Digital India, a term which was unheard of in the past. We were being asked to not concern ourselves with the costs of the various schemes that would be included in the programme and instead to just focus on developing the desirable attributes of a Digital India.

“Providing affordable broadband to all is the most important objective of the Digital India programme. The success of online applications is dependent on the provision of an affordable broadband architecture.”

We made several drafts listing out the various schemes that would be required to achieve such an ambitious goal. However, providing broadband as a utility to citizens was the starting point of every draft we prepared, since all else would depend on the provision of a robust broadband infrastructure.

Broadly, three objectives were envisaged for Digital India:

  • Providing digital infrastructure comprising mobile phones and broadband as a utility to all citizens.
  • Providing digital services and software on demand.
  • Digital empowerment of citizens.

Providing affordable broadband to all is the most important objective of the Digital India programme. We need to understand the fact that broadband is not a luxury. The success of online applications in the areas of health care, education, payments systems, e-governance, etc. is dependent on the provision of an affordable broadband architecture. Once everyone becomes connected, there will be vast growth in all these sectors.

A number of problems in the areas of education and health care could be resolved by harnessing the potential of broadband. For instance, under tele-education, online lectures by highly qualified teachers could be provided to students in even the remotest areas of the country. Similarly, through telemedicine, people could be provided with clinical health care from a distance. Using broadband can thus help eliminate distance barriers and improve access to services that would otherwise not be consistently available in distant rural communities. There are a large number of other applications as well which would be launched once the broadband revolution becomes a reality and a success.

Delivering broadband to citizens

There are 4 billion people in the world who do not have access to the internet and out of these around 1 billion are in India. Only 300 million people have access to the internet in India, of which around 100 million are fixed line users and 200 million are wireless users. While there are more wireless broadband users, the bandwidth provided through this route is abysmally low compared to that provided through wired networks.

While in the US 50 per cent of broadband is provided through the wireline route, either through cable TV lines or through telephone lines, in India we have  a mere 20 million telephone lines and even some of those are being dismantled now. Meanwhile, cable TV is reaching 100 million households in the country. We need to find ways to transmit data through these cables. This option has the potential to provide high speed, fixed line broadband to nearly 500 million people. Moreover, the provision of broadband through cable lines would not require the use of spectrum.

Another route for providing high speed broadband services is the deployment of optical fibre cable (OFC) networks. To this end, the government has initiated a programme, BharatNet, to connect all 250,000 gram panchayats in the country with the OFC network. Around $18 billion will be invested for this initiative. Once the network becomes operational, it is expected that all stakeholders, including the government, telecom service providers and consumers, will benefit substantially from high speed broadband.

In the remote regions of the country, broadband access could be provided through satellites, as deploying the OFC network in these regions is not feasible. Of late, there have also been some developments in terms of providing broadband through unused TV spectrum or TV “White Space”.

“We need to adopt a mixed and multi-pronged approach to address the issue of providing broadband to everyone.”

As far as wireless services are concerned, while people around the world are talking about 5G, India is still perceived to be stuck in the 2G and 3G phase. We don’t need to be stuck and should try to move ahead. The expansion of 3G and 4G services should be accelerated. In order to support this expansion, TRAI has been recommending to the government that more spectrum should be made available to the industry and a lot of progress is being made on this front. Since we already have 1 billion mobile connections, providing broadband through the wireless route is another way of making progress.

Hence, we need to adopt a mixed and multi-pronged approach to address the issue of providing broadband to everyone. Further, everyone will gain access to broadband only if the tariffs are lowered to below a certain threshold. Furthermore, in its consultation paper on determining the price of spectrum bands, TRAI has sought suggestions on the idea of having a system of inverted roll-out obligations, which means that operators should be asked to provide their services in rural areas first instead of in cities. This could be one way to ensure that people in rural areas have access to broadband.

In sum, the industry, the regulator and the government should work together to make the dream of Digital India a reality.