India’s National Digital Communications Policy 2018 approved by the Cabinet gives special attention on fiber infrastructure for broadband expansion and 5G networks.
A copy of the final telecom policy for 2018-2022 available on DoT website says India aims to implement broadband initiatives such as BharatNet, GramNet, NagarNet and JanWiFi with funding from USOF and public private partnerships.
The already delayed BharatNet project will provide 1 Gbps connectivity to Gram Panchayats upgradeable to 10 Gbps at a later stage.
GramNet will be connecting all key rural development institutions with 10 Mbps upgradeable to 100 Mbps in the future.
NagarNet will be establishing 1 million public Wi-Fi Hotspots in urban areas, while JanWiFi aims at establishing 2 million Wi-Fi Hotspots in rural areas.
India aims at implementing a Fibre First Initiative to take fibre to the home, to enterprises and to key development institutions in Tier I, II and III towns and to rural clusters in a phased manner.
India aims at facilitating fibre-to-the-tower program to enable fiber investment in at least 60 percent of telecom towers accelerating the migration to 4G and 5G.
The policy says India is also aiming to offer incentives and promote fibre connectivity for all new developmental construction. Currently, India has approximately 1.5 million kilometres of OFC, and less than one-fourth of the towers are fibre-connected.
India telecom connectivity goals by 2022
# Provide broadband connectivity at 50 Mbps to every citizen
# Provide 1 Gbps connectivity to all Gram Panchayats of India by 2020 and 10 Gbps by 2022
# Enable 100 Mbps broadband on demand to all key development institutions
# Enable fixed line broadband access to 50 percent of households
# Achieve unique mobile subscriber density of 55 by 2020 and 65 by 2022
# 5 million public Wi-Fi Hotspots by 2020 and 10 million by 2022
# Ensure connectivity to all uncovered areas
“We hope that the DoT will closely monitor the timely implementation of this policy, so that the industry can recuperate from the deepening financial stress. The important and urgent requirement is to restore the financial health of the sector for which the policy document envisages the reduction in levies and ease of doing business,” Rajan S Mathews, director general of COAI, said.
Telecom industry is facing huge debt in the wake of investment in spectrum and networks in the recent years. Since telecom operators could not cash in on the demand for mobile data networks due to competition, service providers are looking for additional support to improve the financial health of the sector.
India aims at creating a long-term roadmap for emerging technologies and its use in the communications sector, such as 5G, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Internet of Things, Cloud Computing and M2M.
The telecom policy is also looking at enhancing local manufacturing of telecom networks. But the policy is silent about its goals in terms of investment in domestic manufacturing. Green telecom is also one of the focus areas of the new telecom policy prepared by TRAI and DoT officials.
Baburajan K
