Over a fourth of all villages that lacked network connectivity were brought online in the Union government’s first 100 days, Union telecom minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said on Monday. Further, a total of 7,258 mobile towers have been installed to proliferate mobile network and internet connectivity across India, Scindia added.
“Our vision is to enable 100% mobile network connectivity across all corners of India. A total of 36,721 villages were not connected—in the first 100 days of governance, the ministry of communications has brought connectivity to 9,560 villages. We have also successfully built our own indigenous 4G technology stack, making India the sixth nation in the world to have its own telecom network technology stack,” Scindia said at a press briefing.
The minister further added that a significant part of India’s 100% network coverage plan comes through the deployment of state-run telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL)’s 4G network.
“Our indigenous network will be operated by BSNL, Tejas Networks is deploying the radio access network (RAN) infrastructure, the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) has built the network’s core, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is the system integrator for the entire deployment. Over 36,500 towers have been installed for this already, and by mid-2025, we will deploy 1 lakh towers across the country for pan-India 4G services,” he said.
The BSNL network deployment project’s deal was won by TCS in May last year, marking it as a marquee, $1.83-billion deal for the tech services provider amid a year of downturn in the sector.
While the deployment will help push connectivity across India, Scindia affirmed that the operator’s tariff decisions “is a corporate matter that will be handled by the BSNL chairperson—this is not a matter for the telecom minister to speak about”.
Scindia r also defended the two-phase tariff hikes that telecom operators, including Bharti Airtel Ltd and Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, have implemented over the previous two fiscal years.
“Our voice tariff has reduced by 95%, while data tariff has reduced by 97%—over the past decade. Today, India is one of the most affordable connectivity markets in the world. However, in the past two fiscals, telcos have cumulatively invested ₹4.26 trillion ($51 billion) in capital expenditure to expand 4G coverage and deploy 5G networks across the country. Naturally, it’s not wrong for telcos to expect returns against their investments—in such a situation, an 11% tariff rise is not unfair to the business health of the sector,” Scindia said.
In July, tariff hikes of 11-25% across all consumer-facing plans by private telcos led to a churn in user bases directly in BSNL’s favour—the only telco that did not implement a hike in tariff.
Data published last week by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) showed that the three private telcos, including Vodafone Idea, lost nearly 3.88 million subscribers in July—while BSNL gained 2.93 million. The churn raised questions regarding the rising base affordability of telecom services in India.
A veteran telecommunications consultant, requesting anonymity, said the Centre is unlikely to intervene in tariff matters “as long as the increase is within their perceived purview of necessity”.
“It is undeniably true that India is one of the most inexpensive markets for telecom services. At the same time, it is also true that the two major telcos in India are ramping up value-added services offerings across urban circles—helping them reap profits. Overall, this is a business scenario, and the effective duopoly means that consumers may eventually have to pay incrementally more for services. We have gotten too used to unlimited data access at minimal expenses—the gradual increase in tariff was bound to happen, and the resulting churn isn’t unexpected at all,” the consultant added.
“Overall, it is unlikely that the Centre will involve itself as long as the tariff hikes are not of unreasonable proportions—which the operators will certainly avoid,” he further said.
Scindia also added that the under-duress Vodafone-Idea, which was denied a relief to its adjusted gross liabilities (AGR) payable by the Supreme Court last week, is currently under evaluation by the Centre.
The minister’s comments came on the same day when Ravinder Takkar, chairman of Vi, said that the operator was in talks with “senior government officials” regarding a resolution mechanism towards its AGR dues.
“The government has asked us to comprehensively view what we believe is the right mechanism, and request for addressing the challenge—there’s a clear understanding in the government that it should not be fair to ask us to pay for a calculation error (of the AGR dues). So, we’re in the process of putting together the requests, and we expect a strong engagement with the government,” Takkar said.
Scindia also underlined that 41 out of 100 promised 5G centres of excellence (CoEs) had been approved, and that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had approved 111 funding proposals for 6G network and technology research across institutes.
Further, the Centre’s ‘Sanchar Sathi’ platform, unveiled during the National Democratic Alliance (NDA)’s second term earlier this year, has blocked “over 2.37 lakh mobile handsets, and 1 crore mobile connections associated with wrongdoing”, the minister said.
“We are also overseeing efforts to improve quality of call and data services, and we’ll undertake quarterly reviewing and monitoring of call quality with a granular view of the entire operation.”
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