NEW DELHI: GSMA, the world’s largest telecom lobby group, has said that it’s highly imperative for the government to remove constraints and allay industry concerns to pave a way for PM Narendra Modi’s ambitious Digital India initiative.

“The government’s vision is good and mobile industry is enthusiastic to support the Digital India program while mobile broadband is a critical aspect in making India truly digital. Government must address key barriers to make digital access easy,” GSMA India head Sandeep Karanwal told ET.

GSM Association represents GSM and dual technology operators such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Idea Cellular, Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices and Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (RJIL) which is set to foray with 4G services soon.

Modi-led NDA government that came to power in May 2014 has launched a big ticket Digital India program at an initial outlay of 1.13 lakh crore that envisages digitally empowering 1.25 billion Indians with an array of Internet-and-mobile aided services.

The hurdles, according to GSMA, include network infrastructure and policy; services and devices affordability; taxation; literacy and digital skills; and availability of local content.

“Today, data growth is happening globally but unfortunately, the quantum of bandwidth remains low in India. The existing telecom infrastructure is not adequate as many call drop scenarios and quality of services (QoS) issues surface everywhere in the country,” Karanwal added.

Consulting firm Deloitte, in its recent finding, also said that India being a spectral scarce country is at the cusp of data revolution and many of the existing network sites in dense urban areas are expected to exhaust their data capacity and consequently additional sites would be required.

“Out of nearly 4 billion unconnected people globally, 950 million individuals alone in India are yet to get access to Internet services today,” Karanwal said, adding that the government should also work to improve digital literacy in the country.

The Indian leadership of the GSMA also feels that affordable telecom services in tandem with cost-effective devices would propel the government-led initiative to digitally empower people with citizen-centric online services.

Digital India is an umbrella program to transform India into a knowledge economy with a series of e-initiatives such as digital identity, high-speed broadband services, public Internet access program and universal access to mobile connectivity.

Being implemented by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), this ambitious program, announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in August 2014, also aims to provide government services electronically to all citizens by 2018.

Source: ETTelecom