The telecom sector in the country will witness more reforms in the coming years, minister for communications, electronics & IT and railways Ashwini Vaishnaw has said. He also asserted that the industry too will have to do its bit and reciprocate by improving quality of service significantly.

He was addressing the Annual Flagship Event 2022 of Digital Infrastructure Providers Association (DIPA), an apex industry body representing Digital Infrastructure providers industry in India, here Wednesday. Minister of state for communications Devusinh Chauhan and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.

Vaishnaw said that service quality parameters have to be significantly increased, and the Telecom Department should approach Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in this regard. He advised the Telecom Department to send a new consultation paper to TRAI for significantly increasing the quality-of-service parameters almost making it 3X or 4X of what it is today.

The minister said that the journey of 5G is going to be very exciting and noted that many countries took multiple years to reach 40% to 50% coverage. But we are targeting a very aggressive timeline and the government has given a target of 80% coverage in short time frame and we should definitely cover at least 80% in a very short timeframe, he added.

Vaishnaw urged the industry including telecom operators and infrastructure providers to move full steam ahead on improving quality of services in the country, now that a slew of reforms had been announced and more were lined up. He said initiatives cannot be one-sided, and the equation has to be reciprocal.

Chauhan said that our country is transforming from a developing country into a developed country and the telecom sector’s role is crucial in achieving this. He referred the prime minister’s call for ‘Reform, Perform and Transform’, which should be the slogan of this sector to move ahead.

Chauhan said that the last mile connectivity is very crucial for the development of the telecom sector and he advised the telecom operators to work hard in this direction. He further said that the 5G connectivity should play a major role in providing services relating to health, education, mining, transportation, logistics fields etc. DIPA should play a pivotal role in this regards, he added.

The theme of this year’s Annual Flagship Event was “Gati Shakti Vision for 5G & Beyond”.

During the event, an EY-DIPA white paper titled ‘GatiShakti — paving the way for an accelerated digital infrastructure rollout in India’ was also unveiled. The paper focuses on the fact that the advent of 5G is going to be a game changer for India and is likely to have a profound impact on the socio-economic fabric. 5G is expected to lead to a surge in data traffic, which will necessitate upgrading existing networks and build new greenfield ones with a key focus on the future of trends in telecommunication industry.