OdishaPlus Bureau
Chairman & Managing Director Reliance Industries Ltd Mukesh Ambani addressed 5th Edition of the India Mobile Congress. He delivered a five point agenda to achieve the Digital India Mission with a focus on migration from 2G to 4G/5G at the earliest.
“Indians have embraced technology with unbridled optimism. During COVID, when the chips were down, it is the chipsets that kept us going. When COVID-induced lockdowns rocked our boats, it is technology that kept our lives and livelihoods afloat”, said the business tycoon.
1. Move to 5G at the earliest:
India must complete the migration from 2G to 4G to 5G at the earliest. To keep millions of Indians at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid confined to 2G is to deprive them of the benefits of the digital revolution.
2. Roll-out of 5G should be India’s national priority:
Roll-out of 5G should be India’s national priority. Jio has developed a 100% home-grown and comprehensive 5G solution which is fully cloud native and digitally managed. Because of its converged, future-proof architecture, Jio’s network could be quickly and seamlessly upgraded from 4G to 5G.
3. Affordable Devices and Applications:
Affordability has been a critical driver of the phenomenally rapid expansion of mobile subscriber base in India. When we talk of affordability in the policy context, we only think of affordability of services. Actually, India needs to ensure affordability not only of services, but also of devices and applications.
4. Ubiquitous Fibre Connectivity:
Fibre has almost unlimited data carriage capacity. Therefore, to be future-ready, India has to be fibre-ready. Even during these Covid times, Jio was able to introduce Fibre to Home at 5 million households. If all the players in the industry work together, we can rapidly achieve a nationwide footprint of fibre, just as we reached mobile telephony to every corner of the country in the last decade.
5. Focus beyond Connectivity:
Another candidate for radical transformation is India’s energy systems. Technologies are maturing for energy saving through smart grids, decarbonisation of the economy, and drastic reduction in cost of India’s transition to clean and green energy. All this shows that ‘Care for the People and Care for the Planet’ are embedded in the gigantic transformation that our industry has initiated.
Mr. Ambani pitched for the cause of a digital India and rapid digitization of villages and towns in the country where mobile network penetration is low.