National Telecom Policy

The Government had approved the National Telecom Policy -2012 (NTP – 2012) on May 31, 2012. The policy envisions providing secure, reliable, affordable and high quality converged telecommunication services anytime, anywhere for an accelerated inclusive socio-economic development. The main thrust of the Policy is on the multiplier effect and transformational impact of such services on the overall economy. The thrust areas of NTP – 2012 are:

Vision

To provide secure, reliable, affordable and high quality converge telecommunication services anytime, anywhere for an accelerated inclusive socio-economic development.

Mission

• To develop a robust and secure state-of-the-art telecommunication network providing seamless coverage with special focus on rural and remote areas for bridging the digital divide and thereby facilitate socio-economic development
• To create an inclusive knowledge society through proliferation of affordable and high quality broadband services across the nation
• To reposition the mobile device as an instrument of socio-economic empowerment of citizens
• To make India a global hub for telecom equipment manufacturing and a centre for converged communication services
• To promote Research and Development, Design in cutting edge ICTE technologies, products and services for meeting the infrastructure needs of domestic and global markets with focus on security and green technologies
• To promote development of new standards to meet national requirements, generation of IPRs and participation in international standardization bodies to contribute in formation of global standards, thereby making India a leading nation in the area of telecom standardization
• To attract investment, both domestic and foreign
• To promote creation of jobs through all of the above

Objectives

• Provide secure, affordable and high quality telecommunication services to all citizens
• Increase rural teledensity from the current level of around 39 to 70 by the year 2017 and 100 by the year 2020
• 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
• Promote innovation, indigenous R&D and manufacturing to serve domestic and global markets, by increasing skills and competencies
• Create a corpus to promote indigenous R&D, IPR creation, entrepreneurship, manufacturing, commercialisation and deployment of state-of-the-art telecom products and services during the 12th five year plan period
• Promote the ecosystem for design, Research and Development, IPR creation, testing, standardization and manufacturing i.e. complete value chain for domestic production of telecommunication equipment to meet Indian telecom sector demand to the extent of 60% and 80% with a minimum value addition of 45% and 65% by the year 2017 and 2020 respectively
• Provide preference to domestically manufactured telecommunication products, in procurement of those telecommunication products which have security implications for the country and in Government procurement for its own use, consistent with our World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments
• Develop and establish standards to meet national requirements, generate IPRs, and participate in international standardization bodies to contribute in formulation of global standards, thereby making India a leading nation in the area of international telecom standardization. This will be supported by establishing appropriate linkages with industry, R&D institutions, academia, telecom service providers and users
• Simplify the licensing framework to further extend converged high quality services across the nation including rural and remote areas. This will not cover content regulation
• 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
• Reposition the mobile phone from a mere communication device to an instrument of empowerment that combines communication with proof of identity, fully secure financial and other transaction capability, multi-lingual services and a whole range of other capabilities that ride on them and transcend the literacy barrier
• Encourage development of mobile phones based on open platform standards
• Deliver high quality seamless voice, data, multimedia and broadcasting services on converged networks for enhanced service delivery to provide superior experience to users
• Put in place a simplified Merger & Acquisition regime in telecom service sector while ensuring adequate competition
• Ensure adequate availability of spectrum and its allocation in a transparent manner through market related processes. Make available additional 300 MHz spectrum for IMT services by the year 2017 and another 200 MHz by 2020
• Achieve substantial transition to new Internet Protocol (IPv 6) 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.