'Telco linkage to other sectors to be stronger with 5G'

Telecom is a "critical" sector with direct impact on economic growth, employment and other crucial domains like healthcare and agriculture, and the advent of 5G will strengthen this connect, DoT Secretary Anshu Prakash said on Monday.

Addressing the ASEAN-TRAI program on 'capacity building and sharing of best practices in policy regulation and development', Prakash said the sector is also playing a major role in empowering citizens, contributing to better governance and enhancing transparency.

"Telecom is critical, it is a core infrastructure sector with direct impact on economic growth, on employment and on other sectors because other sectors ride on telecom. Digital connectivity is an integral part...be it finance, agriculture, healthcare, and with the advent of 5G this linkage will certainly emerge stronger," Prakash said.

Speaking on the occasion, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Chairman RS Sharma said information and communications technologies are all pervasive, and hence security of systems and data safety are becoming increasingly important.

"Now that everything is going to ride on this sector, the vulnerability of the sector becomes an important concern, the security of the sector, and safety of the data also become important. So concepts like cybersecurity, data security, data privacy, become relevant and we need to learn and appreciate the importance they are going to play tomorrow," Sharma said.

The TRAI chief also said that while legal and regulatory systems need to evolve to keep pace with the fast-changing digital world, they should not have a "knee jerk" evolution.

"...they should not evolve to strangulate innovation or become an obstacle to the development, they should evolve in a harmonised manner to ensure that while innovations do take place, the growth is orderly. So the approach of regulations in this sector should be facilitating, rather than obstructing," he said.