Mr Ambani explained ways digital revolution will help realise Modi’s 4 ambitious goals whereas Bharti Airtel Chief Sunil Mittal said high GST and fees are hurting Modi’s Digital India
Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani and Bharti Airtel chief Sunil Mittal expressed their views on Digital India today. They were speaking at the inaugural session of the second edition of India Mobile Congress that is currently going on at Aerocity, Delhi.
Mukesh Ambani sounding positive about the ongoing digital revolution in India explained the ways the current digital push will help in increasing farmers’ income, Ayushman Bharat Scheme and quality education. He mentioned that the revolution will also help in employment generation.
Bharti Airtel chief Sunil Mittal, on the other hand pointed at high spectrum, GST and license charges to be the biggest roadblocks to the ‘Digital India’ mission.
What Mukesh Ambani said at the IMC 2018
Reliance chairman Mr Mukesh Ambani said, “Data-led growth and digital revolution will help realise four ambitious goals of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, namely – doubling farmers’ income, Ayushman Bharat Scheme, quality education and employment generation. With world-class digital infrastructure in place. India is now ready to not only embrace but lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This is because, each one of the 130-crore people of India can now productively participate in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We can solve the largest unsolved problems facing humanity, right here in India.”
He also mentioned that India will be ready for 5G before the world. “I believe India will rise from a lowly 135th rank to be among the top three nations in fixed broadband at a pace that will surprise the world” he mentioned.
What Sunil Mittal said at the IMC 2018
Bharti Airtel chief Sunil Mittal expressing his concerns said, “Just like tobacco industries, India’s telecom sector attracts high levies and this issue needs to be resolved as soon as possible. There is also one overarching objective of previous policy and also enshrined in NDCP that revenue maximisation is not the objective. Then why operators and Department of Telecom are under litigation for revenue maximisation.”
He termed high spectrum, GST and license charges as the biggest roadblocks to Modi’s ‘Digital India’ mission. Mr Mittal also specified that spectrum charges need to become more reasonable and affordable.
TRAI’s MySpeed Analytics app had recently ranked Reliance Jio as the fastest network over last 20 months. Another report published by TRAI had said that Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd had 239.23 million wireless broadband subscribers wheras Bharti Airtel had 96.12 million wireless broadband subscribers. The report was published in August 2018.
