Norwegian telecom giant Telenor is all set to hike its stake in Uninor to 100 percent. The company will invest Rs 600 crore this fiscal and roll out services in Assam this year. Telenor's global CEO John Fredrik Baksaas told CNBC-TV18's Malvika Jain that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has raised expectations globally.
He says the new government has raised expectations and the company is just waiting for some execution . Baksaas also says that India is full of good competence. Institutions and bureaucracy can work faster. If one brings investment and ideas into India, the country delivers them back, he adds.
According to Baksaas, the digital India requires some changes and access to spectrum necessary for digital India success. He further says the country needs efficient and principled decision making, continuity in policy framework. India also needs long term framework for long term investment. The digital India programme not ambitious but the country needs to be optimistic, he concludes.
Below is the verbatim transcript of the interview
Q: What are Telenor's plan for India?
A: During the more difficult times the Uninor organisation showed incredible persistence and through that achievement, surviving that phase we now see that we are moving into a different phase where sustainable, profitable position is within sight for us and that is to be competitive at street level where we are right now. To show that the Uninor service offering really is something real that people can connect to and take part in the digital economy as it moves forward.
Q: What is it that worked for you? If an investor has to come in to India what is it that he must keep in mind?
A: There are plenty of aspects but what we have learnt is that you really need to show presence where people buy their communication, where they buy their daily goods and services that is where you need to be, that is why distribution is so immensely important.
Q: While we are right now in a city, people believe and most experts actually say that the growth of the telecom sector actually lies in the interiors of the country, in the rural areas. So what are you doing to tap the market that is still virgin in the rural areas?
A: You also need scale in order to move forward and we are in the midst of building that scale. So, we will not really start where the market is the biggest and that is in the cities where the population still is to a certain extent unconnected. The real penetration figure has still to grow in India and that is where Uninor plays a role, not only for voice and Short Message Service (SMS) but also for internet access.
Q: India if you see 70 percent of the internet penetration the web usage is being seen through mobile devices and given your emphasis on data penetration like most other telecom players what specific steps are you taking to ensure that your message gets communicated to the customers at large?
A: The main selling point is basically affordability. We need to have a very cost efficient operation, I mean you could have affordability both on the network side and at the handset side. For the time being the Smartphone's are still on the high level to be able to reach out to everyone.
But that's only a matter of time may be before we also see that the general price for Smartphone comes down to the level of features phones some years ago which really created the explosion of mobile telephony in all markets.
Q: In addition to affordability data speed is also a crucial factor. The overall experience that one gets by using mobile internet is something that is going to increase the number of customers and I think that is one of the key reasons why you are seeing telecom companies dole out free internet packages in the first place. As far as the user experience is concerned you are seeing the bigger telecom players like Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Idea, Vodafone all talking about rolling out 4G services. You do not have 4G spectrum in your kitty so how are you going to beat that competitive challenge?
A: Again we are back to the spectrum question where government really can open up the remaining part of spectrum that is in the control of government institutions. In other countries much more spectrum have been put into commercial play and that should be done and expected to be done also in India going forward.
Watch video for full interview
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