Executive open to refining and tweaking regulations to address the demanding situations of telecom sector: Aruna Sundararajan

Accepting that the telecom industry is going through a challenging time with ongoing consolidation driven by fierce competition and rise of data over voice, Aruna Sundararajan, secretary, ministry of electronics and information technology said that the government is open to "tweaking and refining" its policies in order to "address the challenges."

Sundararajan was speaking at the Economic Times India Mobile Congress in New Delhi on Friday.

"We do recognise that the telecom industry is facing a set of challenges, there is a consolidation happening due to the fiercely competitive environment and data is becoming the new currency," said Sundararajan.

She added that we need to make sure that the existing players continue to grow while not shutting out new technologies. Sundararajan requested the players to compete at the same time collaborate with each other. "Thats the name of the game. Despite the fact in India that there are 110 crore mobiles, there is large enough room for everyone to grow."

Congratulating the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for coming out with a paper on ease of doing business, Sundararajan said that her ministry would also like to hold discussions with the telecom industry on how to enable ease of doing business in manufacturing. "We have to manufacture not just for India but for the global market too," she added.

Stressing on the fact that the country need to solve the connectivity challenge, Sundararajan said that India has only 30,000-32,000 wi-fi hotspots while there is a need for 8 million wi-fi hotspots in the country. "Government policies have to be tailored to enable large number of wifi hotspots. We will look forward to the industry's inputs," she said.

ET had reported in January that the government is embarking on an ambitious project to provide free WiFi hotspots at more than 1,000 gram panchayats to provide last-mile connectivity in far-flung areas, which is seen as the biggest impediment towards a digital and cashless economy.

Apart from providing Internet connectivity for mass use,

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