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New Delhi: India has a very robust telecom sector with four players, underlined by the fastest 5G rollout in the world, but the quality of services (QoS) is being strengthened further, telecom minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said Monday.
“There are very few countries in the world that have four players within the telecom sector, India is one of those and I look at a very strong telecom sector also moving forward,” he said while addressing media on achieving key objectives of the 100-days programme of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
The minister highlighted that due to the robustness of the telecom sector, India was able to achieve the fastest rollout of 5G and close to Rs 4.26 lakh crore worth of capex has been incurred over the last two years in the telecom sector.
“I look at a very strong telecom sector and I would certainly hope that BSNL also has a very strong role to play in that process,” he added.
Scindia added that going forward, the quality of services (QoS) norms will be strengthened as the monitoring will be more granular. With an objective of improving the telecom network performance, benchmarks will be gradually tightened for key network parameters like network availability, call drop rates, packet drop rates, etc.
He also said despite tariff hikes, rates in India remain one of the cheapest. To a query about tariff hike by BSNL, the Minister said the company would take a call on it. “BSNL has to decide its own strategy, including improving its cost efficiencies, garnering customers etc,” the Minister said.
Talking about the 4G coverage of uncovered villages in the country, the Minister said a total of 7,101 4G mobile towers have been commissioned by telcos, including Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and BSNL under various Digital Bharat Nidhi funded 4G schemes including 4G saturation scheme. Out of these 4G towers 2,618 towers have been made on-air since June 2024.
Scindia said India witnessed the fastest pace of 5G rollout and so far, 4.5 lakh base tower stations have been installed and 97% cities have been covered with 5G.
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