Coming after a gap of 7-8 years, some of the major highlights of the new draft policy include complete removal of roaming charges, a single UASL across the country, with separation of network and delivery operators, affordable and reliable broadband on demand reaching 600 million users by 2020, a new Spectrum Act to be put in place, 500 Mhz of spectrum to be made available for broadband by 2020, revenue generation to play a secondary role, increasing rural teledensity from 35-60 percent by 2017, with 100 percent rural teledensity by 2020, and providing facilities to make India a local and global manufacturing hub, with 80 percent local telecom equipment manufacturing by 2020.
Some of the strategies discussed for implementing the above points, which the new draft policy will address include a strong IPR policy, which is set to come out soon. PSUs will also continue to play an important role in broadband penetration. With a vision to provide secure, reliable, affordable, and high-quality converged services anytime, anywhere, the telecom ministry will develop a robust, state of the art telecom network, which will aim to bridge the rural-urban telecom divide, and will thus have a special rural focus.
Carrying forward the vision to make India a global hub for telecom manufacturing, R&D and cutting edge IT & telecom services to meet local and global demands, 80m percent of local demand for telecom manufacturing is expected to be met internally by 2020, with provisions for entrepreneurship and local manufacturing, consistent with international standards, and commitments. Sibal said that the telecom ministry was expecting a 2,50,000 crore domestic demand for telecom equipment, and that the ministry would support electronic cluster technology for telecom manufacturing.
On the broadband front, the NTP 2011 aims to provide affordable and reliable broadband on demand by 2020, with an aim to connect 600 million broadband users by 2020 at speeds that will gradually be increased from the current 256 Mbps to 2 Mbps and later 100 Mbps, across the country, including rural areas. Mass optical fibre rollout will be provided to all panchayats and other government bodies to begin with, and will later be extended to villages. This will be provided with the help of the USO Fund, and will be an open-access network, which will also be technology neutral. Moreover, all existing infrastructure, including cable TV network will be optimally used for extending broadband to rural areas, and synergies will be built to link government bodies via broadband in terms of e-governance, e-panchayats, national knowledge networks and more on a national level. These will be instruments for public services to reach consumers more effectively.
On the issue of spectrum, NTP 2011 aims to provide a -One nation, one license policy’ across the country, with full MNP, and free roaming. The policy also aims to deliver seamless, voice, multimedia, broadband and FMC across the country and make India a hub for VAS, with 300 Mhz of spectrum being generated for IMT services by 2017, and another 200 Mhz by 2020. Moreover, all spectrum will be auctioned at market prices and there will be a common platform for providing access, with -Right of Way’ issue being addressed. Moreover, there will be a de-linking of licensing of networks to facilitate faster rollout of services, while spectrum and licenses will also be de-linked in future.
There will also be an appropriate exit policy and a policy framework for managing spectrum-related issues will be created, which will also be available in vernacular languages. Towards this goal, there will be a new Spectrum Act that will provide independent guidelines on wireless access, licenses, security and other spectrum issues. Spectrum pooling, sharing and later trading for optimal utilization of spectrum, with a periodic audit of spectrum usage will come into being. Also, existing service providers will be moved to alternate frequency bands, to make way for new technologies. There will also be a roadmap for generating new sources of additional spectrum every 5 years. Carrier charges will also be regulated and mobile satellite services will be compliant with all other communication services, to allow for a seamless telecom network.
Talking about how telecom should be recognized as an infrastructure sector, seeing how teledensity has increased to 7.4 percent from 7.3 percent in the last year, Sibal said that the mobile will become an instrument of empowerment, combining communications with community, in terms of financial and multi-lingual capabilities and thereby seeking to bridge the language barrier. While revenue generation will play a secondary role in NTP 2011, seamless delivery of converged services, voice, data, video, internet, telephony will converge; ILD, NLD and all other broadcasting networks will converge; and there will also be convergence of radio, telecom, personal computers and other interoperable devices, encouraging digitalization of other telecom networks.
Addressing the need of creating additional job opportunities in the telecom sector, NTP 2011 will enhance manpower skills by assessing requirements and needs of human resources, partnering with an international firm for the same, as well as with the HRD ministry to ensure development in this regard. Training institutes and national schools for excellence in telecom will also be set up on the lines of IIT, under the DoT, and these will aim to bridge the gap between R&D and issues on the ground level.
In encouraging new IPv6 applications, a dedicated centre to improve R&D for the same will be set up, and a telecom finance co-operation will also be set up to facilitate the same, with telecom infrastructure projects being aided by the Finance Minister.
Some other important issues that will be looked into include new emphasis on cloud services and M2M, recognizing the growing importance of the same with enormous opportunity that they hold. There will also be an appeal made to the government for rationalization of telecom taxation. In addition, there will be a review of the TRAI Act and Telegraph Act, as well, to make them more consistent with the above NTP policy objectives. Voice-over-internet will be strongly encouraged, seeing that the telecom sector must evolve new economic models for profitability-not depending solely on voice, as a means of profit. Keeping this in mind, the telecom ministry will evolve new strategies for the same.
The draft policy can be read in detail on the DoT website, and after feedback for the same, the new NTP 2011 in its final form will be unveiled.
By Telecomlead.com Team
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