MESS in the Telecom Sector

Experts say the telecom sector has become a virtual graveyard for over 20 companies over the last two decades.

- TN Ashok

The Social Media driven by the Twitter handle may be excessive, but it reflects the frustrations of a growing demographic dividend of a NexGen youth that now powers the nation. Concentrated among the 18 to 40 age group, this generation may lack maturity, even as some pour out pearls of wisdom, albeit rarely.

Here is the example: A Tweet doing the rounds in the social media shows Finance Minister Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman, an educated woman, answering questions in parliament saying ;” I don’t have/ use BSNL at home. I use JIO Fiber. That’s why sold BSNL.”

An apocryphal joke as it may sound, it’s largely symptomatic of a larger malaise that Ms. Sitharaman has inherited from the system and the sector, the way it operates. Already she is overburdened with sorting out the mess of lack of growth, 4.5% the lowest in 10 years, joblessness, lack of manufacture, she is announcing relief measures by the dozen, even as the federal bank tries to put a break on her by controlling money supply to control inflation, a step that is not going to induce consumerism or growth.

What is the mess that the BJP government is trying to untangle? It’s not something that the BJP government created, but a legacy it inherited ever since the 2G spectrum scandal broke out and still remains unresolved.

The Telecom industry in India is broadly divided into two major services: the landline and mobile telephony services and the broadband that engines the internet services and it’s the survival of the fittest as to who can deliver the fastest download speed (measured in Mbps) at the lowest rates, and whether you like it or not, Reliance JIO has completely upset the market projections, calculations and put the entire industry in a virtual TELECOM WAR.