Sunday, October 16, 2011

Telecom Revolution in India : A critical analysis

July 15, 1995, Mr. Jyoti Basu , The  Ex. Chief Minister of west Bengal at that time made first mobile call and the  telecom revolution has started  in India. Since then the telecom industry has been growing with remarkable pace with setting new benchmarks. Now the two persons were just a call away. They could get updated information immediately. But still a call charge was Rs. 16 per minute for outgoing call and Rs. 8 for per minute incoming call. Call rates were too high for common man. This trend continues up to about 2001 when Reliance Industry came in to the telecom field and after that the prices of call rates starts decreasing.Today the number of mobile subscribers touched the mark of 851.70 million mark with second largest country in terms of mobile users in the world till end of June 2011. The  Internet subscribers are about 100 million till the December 2010, which stand India at fourth place in terms of  number of Internet users. Distance between two persons sitting at the two opposite corner of the earth squeezed to few seconds. Now its becomes the history when two persons were waiting for months or years to find information about each other wellness, now It is the matter of few seconds. Internet gave the opportunity of multiple types of communication like e-mail, social networking. Value added services are reaching to the consumer in few seconds. Banking services , employment services, Insurance services, News services and almost all kinds of services can easily avail via internet. This area also become cheaper and faster speed than before. But still more had remained to be done to avail all these services  by every Indian. Call rates with in the Intra-circle and  roaming charges per call was another big issue, Speed and cost of  Internet was still a big hurdle in using these kind of services. 
Now the Govt. of India announces New Telecom Policy (NPT) which may deals all kinds of above mentioned issues.
Highlights of New Telecom Policy

  • National roaming may be made free of charge for subscribers
  • Telecom operators will need just one licence to operate across whole of India
  • Minimum broadband criteria to grow eight fold to 2Mbps by 2015.
  • Spectrum allocation will henceforth be sold only through market -linked processes like auctions
  • Companies will be allowed to trade, pool or share spectrum
  • Struggling firms will be given an appropriate window to exit the business
  • 100% targetted rural teledensity by 2020
  • 600 mn targetted broadband-on-demand connections by 2020
  • 300 mhz Extra spectrum by 2017 plus 200 mhz by 2020
  • 2 Mbps minimum broadband speed by 2015, up from current 256 Kbps.   
According to this New Telecom , all 22 telecom circle will converted into one telecom circle. All Indian comes under one telecom Umbrella, No roaming charges and less outgoing call rate even in out of home network, this is because of one licence to operator to work across whole India. Almost every Indian will carry a mobile and roam across all over India like in his home network. Possibilities of happening of scams like 2G spectrum may be not possible. No. Internet users will increase substantially and with minimum speed of 2 Mbps. Information transfer rate is very high and available at almost every place in India. Services like Education , Medical , Transportation, Employment, Entertainment , Insurance , News and many more will available at our PC and from all over the world. Almost every system will work like a pool of knowledge of every sector and connected to the world of web where everything we find will updated on every moment. Whole country will get the benefit of this telecom revolution and with high speed of Information transfer rate. This technology of telecom will convert whole world into a web village where you have no restriction to enter into a city or state or a country, as you are in a boundary less web village. Even the corruption may be combat with this revolution as Information technology is the only mode through which you find the solution of your problem and the progress report of your file is available in every department on the web.
              Above all is about the positive impacts of this telecom revolution in India. Do this telecom revolution will have any negative impact? As we know every technology comes with positive and negative use depending  upon the user intentions. If there will any negative effects then how will  we face these kind  of challenges? Some of the challenges are mentioned below.
Internet /Mobile addiction : As the call rate and internet charges will reduce the uses of services definitely will increase and this will be an interesting experiment for low age group, they will spend more time on chatting and talking to their friends. This may make them habitual or addictive of this new technology. May be he/she will find him/herself always in a virtual world and listening ringtone of mobile, and eagerness of mail reply of a close friend, absent from real world. The health effects may be reduction in hearing power,  chances of become tumor in Mind due to electromagnetic radiations for long hours uses, reduction of lightning of eyes in  small age. These kind of psychological and physical damage to our young generation is a crucial threat. All of us must be think about to deal with these challenges so that this telecom technology will not create any physical or psychological damaging effects.
Increase in criminal activities: This is another kind of challenge. No doubt this technology is beneficial for building nation, but on the other hand  this also beneficial for criminal mindsets. No doubt this kind activities will sharply rises with this telecom revolution. So the matter of concern is how our security agencies will deal with this criminal issues? How the police the biggest and common security agencies upgrade itself and make it friendly for itself to deal with such crime of action? How they trace the criminal after a crime? Internet security is another kind of threat.What kind of laws will come into affect to deal with such kind of crimes? Hacking of e-mail accounts , net bank accounts and social networking accounts and using these channels to operate a big crime, whereas  the criminal is sitting some where very secured place.
Increasing the habit of lying or misrepresentation : After the introduction of telecom technology a habit of lying has been increasing. People are not ready to open their identities, in fact they  present themselves with fake identities or pictures on the net or social networking sites. As this revolution will increase this kind of fake identities and habit of lying will increase and moral character of a person will decrease. How this we tackle with this challenge? This is also matter of concern.
Absence from real world: As the telecom revolution increases the networking sites will also increases and so the users of this sites increases, no doubt these kind of sites like facebook or twitter are strong channel of  media marketing but question is how much time should be spent on these sites by a user? If the time spent on these sites are exceeds than the real world then the situation of absent from the real world create and very difficult to find the person in the real world. One can share the talk through net or mobile but cannot judge the real feeling of the person as the person is not really talking. The matter of Love or sharing feeling with each other is very difficult and frustration and fatigue will grow automatically. To combat this situation be real more  than to spare time on net.
Technological up-gradation: Before implementing a new technology the awareness about the technology must be spread otherwise in absence of awareness the technology may be misused. This is also a big challenge. In this direction the education  minister of India introduces a small PC for the school students to make familiar them to the current telecom revolution.
                                      So the above analysis results the telecom revolution coming with certainly new and welcome effects but along with some critical challenges. It is up to us that how do we take these revolutionary effects. Remember one thing "A knife used to cut a ladyfinger but if not used properly it may cut the finger of  lady." 


Regards
Narender Shama
Blogger ( Shakehand with Life)

 
     



1 comment:

simplecall said...

I live in London but my parents lives in other country so i am looking for cheapest international calls or cheap calling cards to reduce my call rates

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