“Sufficient and high quality of spectrum, available at the right price is important for the industry<\/a> especially given the current sectoral health,” Sharma in a recent interview told ETTelecom.
Sharma, who has stepped down on Monday as Vodafone Idea's chief executive, said that he would be spending seven weeks at Harvard Business School for an advanced management program, before he could take a new role at the UK-based Vodafone group.
The former top executive said that the government should \"relook\" at double taxation, levies and spectrum charges to support the industry, already reeling into a debt of more than Rs 7 lakh crore.
Last year, the telecom regulator has recommended 275 units of radio waves in the 3300 Mhz -3600 Mhz band range for the launch of fifth-generation or 5G services, but the industry veteran feels that frequencies in the millimeter-wave band should also be considered.
Millimeter band is an extremely high frequency (EHF) or very high frequency (VHF) recognized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
The former executive added that with four players in the market, 35% cap in every band should be applied so that a \"competition\" must come into play.
“We have been saying that the prices are so high and believe that it should come down in line with the National Digital Communication Policy (NDCP) that clearly says the industry’s health needs to be robust and levies should come down,” Sharma said.
The new telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad<\/a>, according to him. has said good things in the first few days of taking charge, and moved a note to the Finance Ministry on the reduction of customs duty, Goods & Service Tax (GST), Universal Service Obligation (USO) levy as well as the blockage of GST.
Rs 30,000 crore of the cash-strapped industry has been stuck due to GST impasse, and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has already written to the Nirmala Sitharaman-headed Finance Ministry, for its disbursal.
Sharma also said that the 5G was very important and the country’s future hinges on the newer technology and the industry had a very ambitious plan for India<\/a> of tomorrow.
5G, he said, would be fundamental to India’s ambition to achieve a $5 trillion economy by 2024.
“5G use cases in Europe may not be relevant for India, be we have to take learning from there. Trails are expected to start soon with potential use cases,” he added.
London-based GSMA in its recent finding said that 5G would account for 15 percent of the mobile connections worldwide by 2025.
Vodafone Idea, according to him, has deployed 5,000 Massive Mimo base stations and the telco is aggressively transforming its network to become 5G-ready.
“5G technology builds upon cloudification and virtualization, and whatever we are deploying in networks, is 5G ready,” Sharma said.
4G<\/a> that has covered more than a billion people today, according to him, is a bedrock for 5G, and the ecosystem for the next generation of technology was evolving.
GSMA, in its study, said that 4G would continue to see strong growth, and is expected to account for 60 per cent of global connections by 2025.
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