Mukesh Ambani calls for urgent policy steps to do away with 2G

India still has 300 million mobile subscribers trapped in the 2G era.

July 31, 2020 04:03 pm | Updated 04:03 pm IST - New Delhi

Reliance, controlled by Asia's richest man Mukesh Ambani has been looking to expand rapidly online to take on the likes of Walmart Inc's Flipkart and Amazon.com Inc's Indian arm. File photo

Reliance, controlled by Asia's richest man Mukesh Ambani has been looking to expand rapidly online to take on the likes of Walmart Inc's Flipkart and Amazon.com Inc's Indian arm. File photo

Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani on Friday called for urgent policy measures to move away from 2G services, which started 25 years ago, and make it a “part of history”. On the silver jubilee of the 1st mobile phone call made in India, Mr. Ambani said that 2G era feature phones have kept around 30 crore subscribers away from basic internet services when both India and other countries are venturing into 5G era.

“I specifically refer to the fact that India still has 300 million mobile subscribers trapped in the 2G era, their feature phones keep them excluded even from the basic usage of the internet at a time when both India and the rest of the world are standing at the doorsteps of 5G telephony. I think necessary policy steps should be taken with utmost urgency to make 2G a part of history,” Mr. Ambani said.

Earlier, Mr. Ambani had announced that RIL’s telecom arm Jio will strive to make India free of 2G by migrating from feature phones to an affordable smartphone.

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