The proposed draft National Telecom Policy 2011 is expected to drive telecom service providers to offer affordable and reliable broadband on demand by 2015.
India also wants to achieve 175 million broadband connections by 2017 and 600 million by 2020 at minimum 2 Mbps download speed and making available higher speeds of at least 100 Mbps on demand.
The government’s strategies are not adequate to encourage operators to invest in broadband segment. Government’s vision alone will not assist the broadband segment to grow further.
Broadband penetration targets set in earlier NTPs were not achieved by a mile. The question is what the government is trying to do right this time. One of the issues is getting back the confidence of the investors globally that the environment is going to be better than earlier, and companies like Vodafone, Uninor, Etisalat are not going to be punished for investing in India,” said Raj Yadav, CEO at Audentus Telecoms.
The telecom minister is keen to make efforts to recognize telecom and broadband connectivity as a basic necessity like education and health and work towards Right to Broadband.
There are a couple of guidelines that will ensure the growth of broadband in India from the present 14 million subscribers. However, government policies should be supported by active participation of the telecom service providers to achieve better growth.
The government is planning to offer high speed and high quality broadband access to all village panchayats through optical fibre by the year 2014 and progressively to all villages and habitations.
The government will ensure adequate availability of spectrum and its allocation in a transparent manner through market related processes. It will make available additional 300 MHz spectrum for IMT services by the year 2017 and another 200 MHz by 2020,” said Kapil Sibal, telecommunications minister.
According to the NTP 2011, operators will be able to deliver seamless ICT, multimedia and broadcasting services on converged networks for enhanced service delivery to provide superior experience to customers.
We at MTS welcome the spirit of the new telecom policy announced by the honorable telecom minister. The strong focus to make affordable and reliable broadband available on demand by 2015 along with one nation, one license regime is a welcome move. To make all this happen, we look forward to the formulation of supporting policies so that more spectrum can be released,” said Vsevolod Rozanov, president and CEO, MTS India.
Equally significant would be the release of policy details specific to a range of issues including delinking of spectrum and telecom license, allowing of spectrum trading, pooling and sharing and also new M&A guidelines. One also needs to understand, how NTP 2011 seeks to look after the interest of the CDMA operators and their customers,” Rozanov added.
The government will revise the existing broadband download speed of 256 Kbps to 512 Kbps by 2011 and subsequently to 2 Mbps by 2015 and higher speeds of at least 100 Mbps thereafter.
Further, policy promoting availability of additional 300 MHz spectrum for IMT services by the year 2017 and another 200 MHz by 2020 is highly appreciated by the industry and expectations will be set on allocation of the same in affordable and timely manner so to ensure even and optimum distribution of the service nationally,” said the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) in a statement.
The telecom policy will build synergies between existing, on-going and future Government programs viz e- governance, e-panchayat, NREGA, NKN, AADHAR, AAKASH tablet etc. and roll-out of broadband.
The telecom ministry is keen to ensure the availability of sufficient microwave spectrum to meet current and future demand for wireless backhaul especially in prime bands below 12 GHz, in addition to higher spectrum bands. Unlicensed spectrum will be made available for proliferation of wireless broadband services.
Broadband is the lifeline of telecom segment. India needs more cooperation between telecom service providers and the government to achieve better growth.
Baburajan K
[email protected]
