Union Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Tuesday announced that the government's next target is getting the Telecom Bill passed in the upcoming Monsoon Session.
"That will lead to a major series of reforms, in terms of spectrum, licenses and regulation. There will be a significant reform because of the Telecom Bill," the minister said.
"There will be significant reform because of the Telecom Bill as you have seen the first draft of the Bill," he added.
Addressing mediapersons on India being awarded the Government Leadership Award at Mobile World Congress being held in Barcelona, the Union minister said, "Telecom is always an industry where everything is benchmarked with the world so whatever the government does will be in sync with the world. Let's see how the entire sector pans out," he said.
In terms of the Bill, Vaishnaw said the ministry was working on all the inputs it received from various ministries, various stakeholders, industry participants, global bodies, other regulators in the sector such as the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the Competition Commission of India (CCI).
"We are taking all those inputs into consideration and we should be coming up with the final draft of the Bill," the Union Minister said, adding, "The draft will all be visible to you before it goes to the Parliament." He added that law-making is a way which is always done in a transparent way," he said.
On a query about Lakshadweep's connectivity, Vaishnaw said, "For Lakshadweep, there is a Cochin-Lakshadweep undersea cable of very-high capacity has been laid right now. It is showing very good progress. By the end of 2023, we should be able to provide world-class, high-speed bandwidth to Lakshadweep."
During the interaction with media persons, he said, "There is a global movement, a lot of global, a lot of regulatory changes happening in the entire world where there is new thinking in the OTT space all over the world. These are new changes all over the world."
"There is no delay. This is a very complex transaction. Such a big leap takes time. But the process started yesterday. Yesterday the first eNodeB, designed in India, made in India, has been installed in Chandigarh," said Electronics & IT Minister on BSNL's indigenous 4G-5G network.
E-UTRAN Node B, also known as Evolved Node B (abbreviated as eNodeB or eNB), is the element in E-UTRA of LTE that is the evolution of the element Node B in UTRA of UMTS. It is the hardware that is connected to the mobile phone network that communicates directly wirelessly with mobile handsets (UEs), like a base transceiver station (BTS) in GSM networks.
The Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona is one of the biggest tech trade shows in the world and an agenda-setting event for the mobile communications industry. This year's event started on Monday and will continue through March 2.
( With inputs from ANI )
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