Published January 3, 2021, 6:00 AM
Year-Ender
The pandemic did not wreak as much devastation in the telecom sector as it did in transportation, property and trade.
In a locked down world, the mantra of businesses became: digitalize or die.
Most of the country’s over 100 million locked down population went online, working and studying from home, making purchases on the web and resorting to telemedicine.
Digital was suddenly equated with safety as face-to-face interaction heightened contagion.
People developed an aversion to physical cash as well, prematurely forcing transactions to go contactless.
And while lockdown froze ongoing upgrades and expansion, the telecom duopoly resumed building immediately though they pared down their capex.