10.5. National Telecom Policy 2012

The Government approved National Telecom Policy-2012 (NTP-2012) on 31st May 2012 which addresses the vision, strategic direction and the various medium term and long term issues related to telecom sector. The primary objective of NTP-2012 is maximizing public good by making available affordable, reliable and secure telecommunication and broadband services across the entire country. The main thrust of the Policy is on the multiplier effect and transformational impact of such services on the overall economy. It recognizes the role of such services in furthering the national development agenda while enhancing equity and inclusiveness. Availability of affordable and effective communications for the citizens is at the core of the vision and goal of the NTP-2012. The Policy also recognizes the predominant role of the private sector in this field and the consequent policy imperative of ensuring continued viability of service providers in a competitive environment.

The objectives of the NTP-2012 include the following:

♤ Provide secure, affordable and high quality telecommunication services to all citizens.

♤ Strive to create One Nation - One License across services and service areas.

♤ Achieve One Nation - Full Mobile Number Portability and work towards One Nation - Free Roaming.

♤ Increase rural tele-density from the current level of around 39 to 70 by the year 2017 and 100 by the year 2020.

♤ To recognize telecom, including broadband connectivity as a basic necessity like education and health and work towards ‘Right to Broadband’.

♤ Provide affordable and reliable broadband-on-demand by the year 2015 and to achieve 175 million broadband connections by the year 2017 and 600 million by the year 2020 at

minimum 2 Mbps download speed and making available higher speeds of at least 100 Mbps on demand.

♤ Provide high speed and high quality broadband access to all village panchayats through a combination of technologies by the year 2014 and progressively to all villages and habitations by 2020.

♤ Recognize telecom as Infrastructure Sector to realize true potential of ICT for development.

♤ Address the Right of Way (RoW) issues in setting up of telecom infrastructure.

♤ Mandate an ecosystem to ensure setting up of a common platform for interconnection of various networks for providing non-exclusive and non-discriminatory access.

♤ Enhanced and continued adoption of green policy in telecom and incentivize use of renewable resources for sustainability.

♤ Achieve substantial transition to new Internet Protocol (IPv6) in the country in a phased and time bound manner by 2020 and encourage an ecosystem for provision of a significantly large bouquet of services on IP platform.

Now, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has released draft of National Telecom Policy 2018 to facilitate growth of the sector and meet requirements of next generation technologies. Also, The telecom ministry has issued technology neutral telecom licences under the NTP 2012 which was delinked from spectrum. Other reforms that have been undertaken include finalisation of spectrum trading and sharing rules, full mobile number portability and increasing of spectrum supply for the industry.

However, the ministry is yet to meet certain targets like 2 megabits per second (Mbps) broadband speed for consumers, abolition of roaming charges across the country, promoting use of white spaces, simplifying network rollout issues, formation of the National Mobile Property Registry and, more importantly, empowering consumers by bringing their disputes with service providers under the jurisdiction of consumer forums.

The government has also notified abolition of wireless operating licence, a move that would facilitate ease of doing business. So far, the telecom service providers are required to obtain a separate licence for installing and operating base stations as also other wireless equipment, which is already covered as part of their main licences like the Unified Access Service Licence. Hence, the move to do away with a separate wireless operating licence reduces the hassles for telecom operators.