Speaking at the India Mobile Congress, Ravinder Takkar said, “Looking at the decade ahead, there is a need to make the industry sustainable in the long run, to effectively support the digital needs of 1.3 billion Indians and millions of small, medium and large enterprises. Towards this future, a few more steps taken quickly will achieve this goal.”

Making adequate spectrum available at reasonable price with easy payment terms, rationalisation of taxes and levies and reducing the burden of legacy litigations, would make the telecom industry sustainable in the long run, Vodafone Idea CEO and managing director Ravinder Takkar said on Thursday.

Speaking at the India Mobile Congress, Takkar said, “Looking at the decade ahead, there is a need to make the industry sustainable in the long run, to effectively support the digital needs of 1.3 billion Indians and millions of small, medium and large enterprises. Towards this future, a few more steps taken quickly will achieve this goal.”

He said that according to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), investments to the tune of $60-70 billion are required for 5G in India, and therefore, issues related to spectrum availability, right pricing, and easy payment terms need to be addressed on a priority basis.

“Industry players are talking about making adequate spectrum available at reasonable prices and easy payment terms, second, rationalise taxes and levies in line with the recommendations of NDCP 2018 and third, reducing the heavy burden of all legacy litigations in the sector,” Takkar said. He added that once this is achieved, it would be upon the industry players to bring about average revenue per user (Arpu) improvement, from the currently abysmally low levels. “Initial steps have been taken to correct this but more needs to be done to provide quality services to customers,” he said.

All the three private mobile operators have recently increased prepaid tariffs by 20% to 25% in order to shore up their Arpus. Takkar had said in September that the company won’t be an outlier in terms of raising tariffs but would also not shy of taking the first step when the time was right. “I am confident that the pricing will start to improve, hopefully in the coming weeks and months. The average Arpu of the industry today is around `130. Five years ago in 2016, it was over `200. So, the most important thing is that we first we need to get the Arpu back to `200 and eventually to `300,” he had said after the announcement of telecom revival package.

Takkar thanked the government for the telecom reforms announced in September, which has provided cash flow relief to the operators, especially Vodafone Idea. “Our focus now is to connect 400-500 digitally unconnected Indians to connect to the digital world,” he added.

Speaking on the occasion, Sanjay Mashruwala, managing director, Reliance Jio Infocomm, said, “Impact of Jio has assured that for India mobile internet base services are available at affordable rates. Agriculture is another industry where 5G can provide access to advanced tools and applications but those must be adapted to India’s specific policy ie, climate, logistics, and economic norms.”

https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/spectrum-at-right-price-will-help-telcos-vodafone-idea-ceo/2385757/