On Saturday, we had Mr.Swami Krishnan, VP Tata Infotech delivering a lecture on the telecommunication landscape in the country.. a thought provoking speech... He raised a paradox..(atleast to me)...He doesn't seem to consider it as a paradox...He put forth a question..
Is teledensity a necessity for economic growth (or) Is economic growth is because of tele density..this is not the exact wording of the question..but its meaning is close to it... Iam of the view, Economic growth should precede teledensity till a certain threshold limit..only then it can percolate down under..otherwise, when having a whole sum meal is a distant dream for about 1/3 rd of the population, owning a telephone can only be a crude joke...
also, what sort of phone connection are you looking at?...is it a fixed line copper cable or optical fibre cable..or a wireless or a mobile ...what is that u define and include in teledensity..
Actually I was thinking on some way to increase the last mile connectivity... one of our professor also told that Government has to invest money in creating the necessary infrastructure, for which Mr.Swami Krishnan told that one shouldnt look towards to do that...the private operators has to do it.. but do the private operators alone has that amount of money and material to take up that... I think they are working towards something like dividing areas or circles as they call and gain a monopoly in that by developing infrastructure..once they put up the infrastructure in place, they can charge the service providers, carrying charges...
But what if the infrstructure is owned by the public ie the people who benefit from it... say for example if a remote village in a far off place has to get a connection, then how about making the people develop their own connectivity, ofcourse with the help of Private and Public Players..like a share can be given to the People of the particular locality in the form of managing it through the Panchayat system or the local governing system like the Municipality or the Village administrative office..something like that...people also has to contribute to setting up the infrastructure in terms of part funding or in terms of work. The private players can be allocated to that area by a tender or an auction system, where the auction or the bid amount would depend on the traffic expected for the period in question. The permission has to be given by the Local governing body in the village level.. the tender has to be open one and there has to be enough conditionalities to ensure level playing field..all the players who wish to operate in the area has to pool in the resources to create the infrastructure..This has some problems too.. there can be instances of mismanagement, there can be instances where the players are not willing to participate in creating the asset..there can be instances of bribing the village officials.. but all these can be tackled because this operates on the local level, where the face to face interaction between players are in a daily basis, and the practices can be checked to a greater extent.The Best Indian Business School Blog