In order to promote the telecom equipment manufacturing industry in India, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has started second phase of consultation process. The regulator has said that the consultation paper will discuss the controversial issue of standard essential patents and grant of their licence for use on the basis of fair, reasonable and on-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. It also said that the issue has been a bone of contention between domestic mobile phone companies and European multi-nationals. It had floated a consultation paper titled ‘Encouraging Telecom Manufacturing in India’ on December 28, 2010 and issued recommendations on the same in April 2011.
TRAI has said that the present consultation paper has been aimed to realistically assess India’s true potential in equipment manufacturing with the aim to arrive at recommendations that would enable Indian telecom industry to transition from an import-dependent industry to a global hub for manufacturing. It pointed out that while the Mobile handset manufacturing industry has shown good progress in the past five years, the telecom equipment manufacturing industry has not been able to match the performance of mobile handset manufacturing industry. Previously, it had come out with its recommendations in 2011 on telecom equipment manufacturing policy.
The regulator has said that today, the services sector commands nearly 60 percent of India's gross domestic product (GDP) whereas the share of manufacturing, a major contributor to the infrastructure domain, has been stagnating at around 16 percent on average since 1990. Further, it cited a report which showed that over 90 percent of the demand of telecom equipment in India was met through imports in 2013-14, and was the same even now.
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