NEW DELHI: Trai is committed to data protection and is in favour of defining the responsibility of various stakeholders in the value chain to ensure that customers’ data is safeguarded, R S Sharma, chairman, Trai said on Thursday.
His statement assumes significance in the background of the ongoing debate over linking of Aadhaar with mobile phones. He was speaking at ‘i-Bharat 2017’ organised by Ficci. He also stressed that the information privacy, security and data ownership, needed to be defined.
Sharma reiterated that Trai follow the process of consultations and formulated policies or issued any mandate. Only after seeking views and conducting open houses with industry and relevant stakeholders would Trai would finalise any policy going forward as well.
Commenting on data ownership, Sharma said there was asymmetry of information. In most cases, the users were not even aware of the long-term consequences of sharing data and how it could be misused.
There is also the issue of bounded rationality and instances have come to light where the service provider seeks the right to use the data of the customer in any form.
Earlier, Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan had urged the industry to work with the government in ‘fibreisation’ as it was a national imperative to achieve the objective of doubling the telecom footprint in the country by 2020.
She pointed out that the BharatNet project, which aims to deploy high-speed optical fibre cables across rural areas of the country, has now reached 83,000 gram panchayats and the first phase of BharatNet will be complete by December this year.
‘India big source for digital talent’
India has the highest proportion of digital talent with 76 per cent among the countries surveyed, compared to the global average of 56 per cent, according to a survey. “The digital talent landscape – India ranks highest in proportion of digital talent at 76 per cent,” says the survey by Capgemini and LinkedIn.
India is followed by Italy at 66 per cent, Spain at 65 per cent, UK at 62 per cent, the Netherlands 61 per cent and the US 55 per cent, it added. The survey was conducted among 753 employees and 501 executives at the director-level or above at large companies with more than 1,000 employees. It covered nine countries – France, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US.