Latest news with #WorldTelecomDay2025
Time of India
4 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
‘Systemic issues' prevent women's participation in tech, telecom jobs: Industry executives
NEW DELHI: Societal and other hurdles have been a major hurdle to the participation of women in the telecom and technology sector workforces, but the trend has started reversing, particularly in the post-COVID-19 period, according to industry executives. They said that avenues have opened for women in the post-Coronavirus period, allowing them to address their home responsibilities while leading a corporate career, courtesy of work-from-home (WFH) and hybrid working arrangements. 'Youngsters graduating from college see women in leadership roles in technology roles, so that becomes not just motivation but also inspiration for them,' Satkeerthi M, chief technology officer (CTO) at Airtel Business, said during a panel discussion at the World Telecom Day 2025 virtual event organised by ETTelecom. She added that in the prior generations, women's representation in leadership roles was low, but that is now changing. 'Today, it gives the youngsters the ability to think they can also grow to that (leadership roles),' Satkeerthi said, adding that family, friends, and siblings have now also become supportive of women's growth. 'One aspect of COVID-19…is that it gave a good balance to a lot of people to try and look at work and home at the same time. This gave women the opportunity to be a lot more flexible,' she said. Aruna Pidikiti, executive vice president (technology) at Vodafone Idea (Vi), noted that three to four 'systemic issues', including the dominance of men in decision-making activities, opaque promotion policies, lack of accessibility to mentorship from the top management, and self-confidence-related issues, act as barriers for women who aspire to advance to senior roles in corporates. 'If organisations work systematically on three to four factors, such as educating everyone on the gender parity and creating structural programs as well, especially for the women leaders, and then having an inclusive mentorship or sponsorship, definitely there would be an opportunity,' Pidikiti said. Jeanette Whyte, head of public policy, GSMA APAC, said the telecom industry association has a 'Women for Tech' initiative which aims to empower and support women in the technology industry. 'This year, the topic is creating digital trust and empowering women with Inclusive AI. I think we have got this far, and supporting each other is immensely important,' she said. Citing Globe Telecom, which has 52% women in executive roles, Whyte said that Indian companies can consider setting internal workforce diversity goals and tracking progress regularly. 'I think that companies in India can look at this to try to encourage having measurable targets,' she added. The GSMA executive further suggested that recruiters can also utilise artificial intelligence (AI) to detect biases in hiring and promotion decisions, to ensure that the company's workforce progresses through the ranks equitably. 'In conclusion, there are systematic issues that need to be resolved, but the focus of our conversations was on how women can help themselves, (such as) by advocating for themselves. Some of the key takeaways are also that you shouldn't be shy away from learning. Let your ability outshine everything else, and be persistent. Have the conviction, confidence and be assertive,' said Sonica Bajaj, partner, KPMG in India , who moderated this panel discussion.
Time of India
20-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
India to lead global telco QoS benchmarks, satcom rollouts: Jyotiraditya Scindia
NEW DELHI: India's telecom regulator has proactively released regulations to improve service quality for millions of mobile subscribers, and the Centre expects that telecom carriers will lead the way in surpassing global quality-of-service benchmarks, said Union Telecom Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Tuesday. 'It is my sincere hope that all our telco providers will move up the value chain in terms of quality of service beyond international benchmarks,' Scindia said at the World Telecom Day 2025 event organised by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). He added that the telecom sector also needs to prioritise performance, transparency, and accountability, while also focusing on ensuring online safety and security. The union minister also said that the industry is now seeing the emergence of new connectivity technology, i.e., satellite commuincations (satcom), and added that it will be complementary to the mobile services. 'TRAI has come out with its regulations for administrative assignment. Multiple players have availed of a license, and I am very confident that this roll out on the satellite network as well will probably be the fastest in the world in the years to come, growing from the current $2.3 billion market to almost a $20 billion market by 2028,' Scindia said, drawing parallels to the world's fastest roll-out of fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks in the nation. This represents a 10x market value growth over the next three years. 'These are growth rates that you will probably not see anywhere else in the world,' the union minister said. Satcom companies in the fray include Elon Musk-owned Starlink, Jeff Bezos-owned Amazon Kuiper, Bharti Group-backed Eutelsat OneWeb and Reliance Jio-SES, Globalstar, among others. At stake is India's growing space economy, which is reckoned to have a potential to touch $44 billion by 2033, boosting its global share to 8% from 2% currently, as per space regulator IN-SPACe. Starlink has recently received a letter of intent (LoI) from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for a satcom licence. It now needs clearance from the space regulator and allotment of airwaves before it can start services. Bharti-backed Eutelsat OneWeb and Jio-SES have already got all clearances to launch commercial satellite broadband services. They await airwaves. 'Focus on affordability' Scindia said the affordability of mobile data has been a focus area of the Ministry of Communications , noting that costs have dropped from ₹287 per GB to just ₹9 GB today. 'We are today the cheapest data market in the world. The average cost of data (1 GB) across the world is $2.9. We have one of the most affordable data rates due to the public-private sector partnership that we have been able to scale up,' the union minister said. Citing research reports, Scindia said the average monthly data usage per subscriber has grown by 349 times – from 61MB to about 21.5GB today. 'These statistics are unheard of in the world,' he added. He underscored that the government is focusing on delivering connectivity anytime and anywhere in the country, citing the 4G and 5G saturation programmes, which have a financial outlay of ₹26,316 crore to connect about 27,000 villages. 'We have deployed 9,300 towers, and another 11,000 towers more will be installed. I must commend our private sector, which has led one of the fastest 5G rollouts across the world,' the union minister said. Scindia said that in just 22 months, since the launch of fifth-generation (5G) services in October 22, 99% of India's districts, covering 82% of the population, are receiving 5G coverage.
