IMC 2024: From Satcom Debate To Navigating AI Complexities, Telecom Industry Bats For Vikshit Bharat Addressing the India Mobile Congress, industry leaders such as Airtel, Jio, Vodafone, showed their commitment to playing a pragmatic role in the technology and telecom landscape
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Inaugurating the eighth edition of India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2024 in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that India has become the second largest 5G market in the world. This growth is on the back of massive data consumption in the country which has been fuelled by the large-scale smartphone adoptions by the Indians.
With over 1.2 billion mobile users and 950 million Internet users, Modi focused on the significance of hosting the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA) and IMC. For the first time, WTSA is hosted in Asia, in India. Almost 3,200 delegates from 160 countries, is part of WTSA, the highest ever for any WTSA in its history. India is leading the 5G revolution, deploying half a billion base stations in just 22 months, covering 90 per cent of the population.
With this, India also has aspirations to lead in 6G. Addressing the Mobile Congress, the industry leaders showed their commitments to playing a pragmatic role in the technology and telecom landscape, while fostering a framework of rules and regulations for the sector.
Sunil Mittal, founder and chairman of Bharti Enterprises, emphasized for satellite connectivity in the country, he said, "Satellite companies who have ambitions to come into urban areas need to take the telecom licences like everybody else, be bound with the same rules. They need to buy the spectrum as the telecom companies buy."
Mittal has an interest in both satellite communication business, through OneWeb, and mobile services, through Airtel. So far, auction of satellite spectrum was supported by Reliance Jio and opposed by Bharti Airtel. IMC also doted on the complexities of artificial intelligence (AI).
Akash Ambani, chairman of Reliance Jio Infocomm, emphasized the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for India's future. Speaking at the conference, Ambani expressed his belief that AI can turn India into a global manufacturing and service hub.
"With Artificial Intelligence, India has the potential to transform its manufacturing sector and become a new-age factory and service center for the world. AI is critical to achieving our vision of a developed India by 2047," Ambani said, adding that Jio is committed to democratising AI, offering powerful AI models and services to everyone in India at affordable prices. He also pointed that Jio is building a National AI Infrastructure. Ambani also lauded India's rapid shift from 2G to 5G technology, projecting a brighter future with 6G advancement. "I would like to assure the Prime Minister that India will have an even better record with 6G. From a nation that ranked a lowly 155th in mobile broadband adoption, we have risen to become the world's largest data market," he said.
In order to make telecom safe for everyone, Modi pressed on the need to have a framework for the digital world. "The WTSA needs to think about this and make telecommunication safe for everyone." India's Data Protection Act and National Cybersecurity Strategy aims to make a safe digital ecosystem in India. "We need global standards for ethical AI and data privacy that respects the diversity of various countries," Modi added.
