NEW DELHI: Telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday urged the telecom service providers (TSPs) to focus on improving the quality of service by three to four times from current level. The minister, while addressing the Digital Infrastructure Providers Association’s (DIPA) annual conference, said the Prime Minister Narendra Modi constantly reviews each and every aspect of the telecom industry, thus it is now up to the telecom service providers or the infrastructure providers to come up with better quality of service.
“I will be requesting TRAI to send a new consultation paper on increasing the quality of service parameters so that whatever is the quality of service that we are seeing today should now improve significantly,” said the minister. His comment assumes significance as there are many reports of call drops and patchy networks.
The minister said the journey of 5G is going to be a very exciting journey and noted that many countries took multiple years to reach 50% 40% coverage. “We are targeting a very, very aggressive timeline. The government has given a target of 80% coverage in a short timeframe. We should definitely cover at least 80% in a very short time frame,” said Vaishnaw.
The minister also said the government is coming up with the second reform for the telecom industry. “So, the key takeaways from today’s session are that there will be very soon another wave of reforms,” said the minister.
The minister is also concerned about power consumption by mobile towers and called it a big issue. He asked the industry people to come up with a solution, which can reduce the carbon footprint of the telecom industry.
“How can we use more and more renewable energy or something like green energy,” asked the minister. “Please come up with some sort of solution, which can really reduce the power and carbon footprint of the telecom industry. It is the one item which I’ll request you to come up with some options,” requested the minister.