30-35% of the GDP is enabled by telecommunications in the lockdown out of over 54% of the total services sector contribution.
A mobile first nation, telecom is synonymous to mobility in India. Unfortunately, the telecommunications have been seen nothing more than a cash cow at many instances. We all got ‘carried’ away by the sway of digital, forgetting that the backbone of digital is nothing but telecommunications. Even when we talk of advanced technologies like AI, IoT, Smart City, etc., it is all dependent on connectivity and the wonderful orchestra of data connectivity brings in to power up any ‘smart’ and ‘intelligent’ technology.
Since the unavoidable lockdown due to covid-19 pandemic, it is only telecom which is keeping the economic engines on. Not just economy, but even the social sectors like health and education are alive only leveraging the power and enabling nature of the telecommunications.
In India over 54% of the GDP comes from services sector. All of them are not up at the moment. For instance, travel, hotel and a few more services are completely shut off. But whatever proportion of the services sector is live, in my estimates 30-35%, it is only because of the telecom infrastructure that such large scale of economic activities is still up, despite of a lockdown which allows extremely urgent physical moment.
Telecommunications has been directly contributing around 6% of the GDP and during the lockdown, this has gone up 5-6 times, which is huge. While, at the moment it is acting up as a by-pass or a back-up infrastructure where organisations including the governments have put up activities via digital mode. Hereafter, many of these activities are going to stay and the digital ‘jumpstart’ which has resulted due to corona virus pandemic, will only add to the contribution of digital to the economy. However, we have to bear it in mind that digital is not just IT, or Electronics or for that matter telecommunications. It is a play of all the three. Somewhere in the past, the role of telecommunications was undermined and we were more liking the aesthetic part of the digital story, which did not primarily come from telecommunications. While we were loving services like Uber, Swiggy, Netflix and what not, we were not recognising that it’s the telecom which is enabling all of these.
2020 is a landmark year for the telecommunications in India. We are in the silver jubilee year of mobility services which first started in 1995, a year after the private sector was allowed in the sector. In the recent past, the sector has been in the midst of all controversies and unfortunate events where everyone was looking down at the sector. However, somewhere the lockdown is making us realise its importance and relevance in our lives. If at all, we are active socially, economically and politically, it is only through telecommunication in these difficult times. Let us all celebrate the power of telecommunications and greet the sector for 25 years of yeoman service to the nation.
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