‘Digital sovereignty’ is need of the hour: Trai

Trai on Monday strongly advocated domestic manufacturing of telecom equipment and “digital sovereignty”, as it stressed on the importance of providing opportunities for local players in the sector and called for sharp focus on digital infrastructure investments.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) Chairman R S Sharma said government policies relating to electronics manufacturing have “paid rich dividends”, and added that more needs to be done, particularly to push domestic manufacturing of telecom equipment and ensure value addition.

He warned against dumping strategies resorted by countries to kill domestic industry before raising prices, and added such ‘tactics’ need to be countered with preferential market access policy.

“Ultimately countries have strategies where they actually dump things and they try to kill the domestic industry and then they raise the prices... essentially we need to realise this tactics and we need to appropriately give preferential market access policy which has been there... need to ensure we implement them,” he said.

Addressing a PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry webinar on ‘Telecom sector in Covid-19’, the Trai chief stressed on the need to promote domestic manufacturers of hardware, signalling equipment, fibre and other equipment.

Sharma noted that while the country had performed well on software front, building strong and unmatched platforms for digital identity and digital payments, there is a need to ensure flow of investments into digital infrastructure in the country.

Trai chairman stressed on promoting domestic manufacturers of hardware, signalling equipment, fibre and other products