GSMA honours Indian government


Posted on February 14, 2007  /  1 Comments

Barcelona, Feb 13 (bdnews24.com) – The GSM Association (GSMA) has presented its Government Leadership Award 2007 to India for exceptional achievement in mobile communications policy.

India has been selected because of its success in establishing a framework of policies and regulations, which have stimulated the growth of mobile telecommunications over the past three years.

The latest data from the Indian government shows that India’s mobile operators are now collectively adding six to seven million new subscribers each month.

GSMA’s CEO Rob Conway presented the award to Thiru Dayanidhi Maran, India’s minister for communications and information technology. The presentation took place at the GSMA’s Leadership Summit in Barcelona.

The Indian government’s policies have not only helped revive but stimulate the country’s mobile industry, whose growth, only a few years ago, was stifled due to various challenges.

Since then, the government has done various policy and regulatory reforms. Relaxing rules on foreign direct investment, raising the limit for foreign investment in a telecoms company from 49 percent to 74 percent is a major milestone.

It has liberalised the domestic and international long-distance markets, facilitated the sharing of network infrastructure, increased the amount of commercially available radio frequency and secured spectrum for third generation mobile in the IMT-2000 core band.

The GSMA’s Government Leadership Award was given to Brazil in 2005 and to Pakistan in 2006.

1 Comment


  1. Interesting that GSMA honored two governments that belong to the top three of our Telecom Regulatory Environment survey.

    The Philippines which tied with India on the overall score may feel a little miffed, but for our part, we offer the warmest congratulations to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the Department of Telecom (DoT), each responsible for 3 of the six dimensions of regulatory performance.