Days after releasing the draft national telecom policy, the government seems to have gone into defensive mode.

The draft is divided into 3 broad areas: expanding the current telecom infrastructure, outlining plans for emerging technologies and data security.

The slowdown was more prominent in urban areas where the growth stood at around 9 per cent compared to 14 per cent in rural areas in 2017. It's a sign of concern for telecom operators.

Li-Fi is high-speed, wireless communication using visible light instead of radio frequencies.

According to Google, the company's newly launched digital payment mobile app, Tez, has over 12 million users, and has seen 140 million transactions. The app would soon feature payments for merchants too.

California-based Apple is keen to sell more iPhones in India, one of the world's biggest smartphone markets, as growth slows in the US and Chinese markets, but the high price of its mobile handsets has kept the smartphone out of reach of most Indians.

Sunil Mittal, who shared the dais with Mukesh Ambani at the India Mobile Congress, came out in favour of a collaborative approach to overcome challenges and unleash the growth potential of the sector.

Speaking at the India Mobile Congress which is being held for the first time, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani said, \"data is the new oil and India does not need to import it. We have it in super abundance and we have to ensure every Indian has access to it.\"

The Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries went on to chalk out the road-map for his companies in the coming days.

RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani announced the launch of free of cost JioPhone with a refundable Rs 1,500 security deposit.

In India, telecom operators including Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, Bharti Airtel Ltd and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) have signed deals to roll out 5G services possibly by 2020.

Reliance Jio has finally made the announcement of stopping their popular New Year offer. Though it might be the end of a free-run for all data-hoggers, the company is still offering a good deal at a very reasonable price.

In his 108-minute budget speech delivered on February 1, the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley spent less than a minute on the telecom sector. The minister said that \"the recent spectrum auctions have removed spectrum scarcity in the country, and allocated an additional Rs 10,000 crore for BharatNet project in 2017/18.\"

Today, the digital divide in India is real - illiteracy rate is 25-30 per cent and digital illiteracy is even higher.

Why becoming cash-less is a premature decision for India?

From being a country of single-screen households with cinema houses as the only other alternative to the drawing room TV until the late 1990s, to now having multiple screens in the form of portable devices like smartphones, laptops and tablets, broadband and mobile internet have surely opened more gateways for Indian consumers to access entertainment in the form of videos.

The new report, 'The Mobile Economy: India 2016' by GSMA Intelligence, noted that at the end of June 2016, 616 million unique users had subscribed to mobile services in India, making it the second-largest mobile market globally.

Reliance Jio Infocomm is setting up 500,000 activation outlets and close to a million recharge outlets to prepare for the launch of its 4G services in the coming months.