The draft of the New Telecom Policy (NTP) 2011 unveiled by the Government on Monday aims to improve the quality of telecom services and bring greater transparency to an industry tainted by the recent spectrum scam investigations. (See IndiaWatch: NTP May Allow Spectrum Sharing and NTP 2011: More transparency, Better accountability.)
The Government's aim is to provide a clear roadmap for the continued growth of the communications services market, provide a level playing field to service providers and attract further foreign investments.
The Government is expected to invite comments and feedback from the industry stakeholders soon so that amendments can be made soon and the policy implemented by the end of 2011.
The key highlights of the draft policy are:
Impetus on broadband
The new telecom policy continues to show confidence in broadband as a key enabler of economic growth and aims to provide affordable and reliable broadband to the masses by 2015. It aims to provide high-speed, high quality broadband access to all village panchayats through optical fibre within next three years. The target is to have 175 million broadband connections within six years and reach 600 million by 2020, a far cry from the 12.5 million of today. The NTP 2011 also aims to reclassify broadband as a service with a minimum downstream speed of 512 Kbit/s in 2011 (from the current 256 Kbit/s) and, subsequently, 2 Mbit/s by 2015.
Teledensity
NTP 2011 sets a target of attaining 100 percent rural teledensity by the year 2020, up from the existing 35 percent. Moreover the draft also proposes to promote indigenous Research and Development (R&D), innovation and manufacturing that could meet the local and international market demands of telecom equipment.
One license, no roaming
The draft proposal also provisioned for a single license to service providers to operate within the India market and proposes theabolition of domestic roaming, a move that would provide huge relief to frequent travellers in the country.
Spectrum
The Government will allow spectrum pooling and sharing andwill free up 300 MHz of extra capacity for commercial telephony by 2017 and another 200 MHz of spectrum by 2020. Additionally, to keep spectrum-related affairs more transparent, the Government will enact a separate Spectrum Act that will deal with all issues connected with wireless (spectrum) licenses and their terms.(See NTP 2011: Govt Allows Spectrum Sharing.)
Restructuring of the Department of Telecommunications
The Government will look into the restructuring of India's telecom regulator, the TRAI, and DoT. While the regulatory body will continue to focus on policy making, DoT will continue to monitor and enforce license conditions.
Sharing of Networks
The NTP 2011 draft proposes the concept of network sharing and delinking the licensing of networks from the delivery of service to the end users. The move is expected to facilitate faster roll out of services across the country and will enhance the quality of services and bridge the digital divide in the country.
Transition to IPv6
The NTP aims to achieve substantial transition to IPv6 in a phased manner by 2020.
Favoring cloud
There will be new policy initiatives to expand cloud services and technologies at global competitive prices with minimum cost of service delivery. The new policy will also strive towards adopting best practices on privacy, network security and reviewing encryption.
Indigenous manufacturing
The draft policy suggests that 80 percent of Indian telecom sector demand should be met by domestic manufacturing, with a value addition of 65 percent by 2020. However, there is no specification on how the government intends to achieve this ambitious target. "The government has just been talking since 1999 on the manufacturing. You don't need things just on paper. Even then they missed out on the action plan. There is a strong need for Indian operators to be synchronised with Indian manufacturers. Government support is also required on credit lines, research and development and innovation. We are nowhere in the inclusive growth of manufacturing," comments Ashok Aggarwal, Director General, Telecom Equipment Manufacturing Association (TEMA).
The draft policy promises a lot on paper but there is little detail currently on quite how the Government plans to achieve its goals. History shows that, in spite of having a strong framework, poor planning has let India miss many targets and objectives in the past.
For the complete policy document see PIB.
Jatinder Singh, Principal Correspondent, Light Reading India
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