Growth of Telecom Services in India and Its nature

India is now having the second largest telecom network in the world, only after China which stood first. The over all teledensity was 7.04 per cent and the rural teledensity was 1.7 per cent in March 2004. By the end of January 2013, it increased to 73.07 per cent and 40 per cent respectively. The wireless subscriber base has increased from 3 crore 36 lakh in March 2004 to 86 crore 47 lakhs in December 2012. The share of wireless subscribers in the total number of telephone subscribers was 96.56 per cent by December 2012. The average tariff per minute for the outgoing call for the GSM mobile services dropped from Rs 2.89 in March 2004 to 47 paise in December 2012.

The Government is claiming in its posting dated 28.5.2013 in its website pib.nic.in, that this growth is spectacular and it is due to the series of reform measures by the Government and due to the dominant role played by the private sector. This means the privatisation policies are the reason for this growth.

But the theory that the privatisation policies only are capable of achieving such a “spectacular growth” is a false theory. In fact, the growth of telecom sector in India is not really so spectacular.  As per the ICTD Index(Information and Communication Technologies Development Index) published by the ITU(International Telecom Union) affiliated to the United Nations Organisation in its report “Measuring the Information Society, 2012”, India is far behind even Vietnam in ICT develo0pment. Vietnam stood at 81^th place where as India stood at 119^th place in the world in ICT development in the year 2011. China stood at 78^th place and Srilanka at 105^th place. Even Bhutan stood at one place higher than India, at 118^th place. China was behind India in 1980s in telecom sector, but now it is far ahead of India.

While the spectacular development in telecom services sector in China was due to the Public Sector where 4 PSUs are providing telecom services, the not so spectacular development in India is being claimed as spectacular and due to the privatisation policies. It is to be noted that due to these privatisation policies, about 6 lakh crores rupees or more was paid to foreign equipment manufacturers for procuring the foreign companies manufactured equipment whereas the FDI received by India was below 1 lakh crore rupees. Thus due to these privatisation policies, the net result is draining out an enormous quantity of our resources to foreign countries and destruction of our telecom equipment manufacturing industry and destruction of our research and development in telecom sector. Now the Government is saying that this dependence on foreign equipment manufacturers is against our national security!.

Thus if you look at all the facts without confining yourself to growth in subscribers numbers and reduction in tariff, you will find that the growth in telecom sector in India is lopsided and anti people since a huge amount of money, around 5 lakh crores was lost by India in the name of this development. On thee other hand, China was able to develop its telecom equipment manufacturing industry and its R&D and today, its Companies ZTE, Huwaei etc manufacturing telecom equipment are able to compete with the Western Telecom Equipment manufacturers like Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola etc and supplying equipment in large quantity to India and other countries. This is due to the control of the Government in China in telecom services sector wherein all the telecom services providers are PSUs. The China Government used its control on telecom services for making foreign equipment manufacturers to transfer their technology to China Telecom equipment manufacturers and develop it further. Precisely because India depended on the private telecom operators for the development of its teelecom services, it became a dependent on foreign equipment manufacturers even at the cost of its national security.