Telecom Lead India: The Department of Telecommunications
(DoT) has shared the final details of the National Telecom Policy 2012.
TelecomLead.com is presenting the final details.
The primary objective of NTP-2012 is maximizing public
good by making available affordable, reliable and secure telecommunication and
broadband services across the entire country. The main thrust of the Policy is
on the multiplier effect and transformational impact of such services on the
overall economy. It recognizes the role of such services in furthering the
national development agenda while enhancing equity and inclusiveness.
Availability of affordable and effective communications for the citizens is at
the core of the vision and goal of the National Telecom Policy – 2012. NTP-2012
also recognizes the predominant role of the private sector in this field and
the consequent policy imperative of ensuring continued viability of service
providers in a competitive environment. Pursuant to NTP-2012, these principles
would guide decisions needed to strike a balance between the interests of
users/ consumers, service providers and government revenue.
I. VISION
To provide secure, reliable, affordable and high quality
converged telecommunication services anytime, anywhere for an accelerated inclusive
socio-economic development.
II. MISSION
1. 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.
2. To create an inclusive knowledge society through
proliferation of affordable and high quality broadband services across the
nation.
3. To reposition the mobile device as an instrument of
socio-economic empowerment of citizens.
4. To make India a global hub for telecom equipment
manufacturing and a centre for converged communication services.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. To attract investment, both domestic and foreign.
8. To promote creation of jobs through all of the above.
III. OBJECTIVES
1. Provide secure, affordable and high quality
telecommunication services to all citizens.
2. Increase rural teledensity from the current level of
around 39 to 70 by the year 2017 and 100 by the year 2020.
3. 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.
4. Enable citizens to participate in and contribute to
e-governance in key sectors like health, education, skill development,
employment, governance, banking etc. to ensure equitable and inclusive growth.
5. 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.
6. Promote innovation, indigenous R&D and
manufacturing to serve domestic and global markets, by increasing skills and
competencies.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. Strive to create One Nation – One License across
services and service areas.
13. Achieve One Nation – Full Mobile Number Portability
and work towards One Nation – Free Roaming.
14. 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.
15. Encourage development of mobile phones based on open
platform standards.
16. Deliver high quality seamless voice, data, multimedia
and broadcasting services on converged networks for enhanced service delivery
to provide superior experience to users.
17. Put in place a simplified Merger & Acquisition
regime in telecom service sector while ensuring adequate competition.
18. Optimize delivery of services to consumers
irrespective of their devices or locations by Fixed-Mobile Convergence thus
making available valuable spectrum for other wireless services.
19. Promote an ecosystem for participants in VAS industry
value chain to make India a global hub for Value Added Services (VAS).
20. 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.
21. Promote efficient use of spectrum with provision of
regular audit of spectrum usage.
22. De-licensing additional frequency bands for public
use.
23. Recognize telecom as Infrastructure Sector to realize
true potential of ICT for development.
24. Address the Right of Way (RoW) issues in setting up
of telecom infrastructure.
25. Mandate an ecosystem to ensure setting up of a common
platform for interconnection of various networks for providing non-exclusive
and non-discriminatory access.
26. Strengthen the framework to address the environmental
and health related concerns pertaining to the telecom sector.
27. Enhanced and continued adoption of green policy in
telecom and incentivise use of renewable energy sources for sustainability.
28. Protect consumer interest by promoting informed
consent, transparency and accountability in quality of service, tariff, usage
etc.
29. Strengthen the grievance redressal mechanisms to
provide timely and effective resolution.
30. Strengthen the institutional framework to enhance the
pace of human capital formation and capacity building by assessing and
addressing educational and training needs of the sector.
31. Encourage recognition and creation of synergistic
alliance of public sector and other organisations of Department of
Telecommunications (DoT). This should be achieved through appropriate policy
interventions and support for optimum utilisation of their resources and
strengths in building a robust and secure telecom and information
infrastructure.
32. Evolve a policy framework for financing the sector
consistent with long term sustainability.
33. Put in place appropriate fiscal and financial
incentives required for indigenous manufacturers of telecom products and
R&D institutions.
34. 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.
35. Strengthen the institutional, legal, and regulatory
framework and re-engineer processes to bring in more efficiency, timely
decision making and transparency.
36. Put in place a web based, real time e-governance
solution to support online submission of applications including processing,
issuance of licences and clearances from DoT.
IV. STRATEGIES
1. BROADBAND, RURAL TELEPHONY AND UNIVERSAL SERVICE
OBLIGATION FUND (USOF)
1.1. To develop an eco-system for broadband in close coordination
with all stakeholders, including Ministries/ Government Departments/ Agencies
to ensure availability of media for last mile access, aggregation layer, core
network of adequate capacity, affordable equipment including user devices,
terminals and
Customer Premise Equipment and an environment for
development of relevant applications. Formulate policies to promote competition
by encouraging service providers, whether large or small, to provide value
added services under equitable and non-discriminatory conditions.
1.2. To recognise telecom, including broadband
connectivity as a basic necessity like education and health and work towards
-Right to Broadband’.
1.3. To lay special emphasis on providing reliable and
affordable broadband access to rural and remote areas by appropriate
combination of optical fibre, wireless, VSAT and other technologies. Optical
fibre network will be initially laid up to the village panchayat level by
funding from the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF). Extension of optical
fibre connectivity from village panchayats to be taken up progressively to all
villages and habitations. Access to this Optical Fibre Network will be open,
non-discriminatory and technology neutral.
1.4. Provide appropriate incentives for rural rollout.
1.5. To revise the existing broadband download speed of
256 Kbps to 512 Kbps and subsequently to 2 Mbps by 2015 and higher speeds of at
least 100 Mbps thereafter.
1.6. To encourage Fibre To The Home (FTTH) with enabling
guidelines and policies, favouring fast transformation of cities and towns into
Always Connected society.
1.7. To incorporate enabling provisions in the current
regulatory framework so that existing infrastructure including cable TV
networks are optimally utilised for extending high quality broadband services
in rural areas also.
1.8. To establish appropriate institutional framework to
coordinate with different government departments/agencies for laying and upkeep
of telecom cables including Optical Fibre Cables for rapid expansion of
broadband in the country.
1.9. To leverage the mobile device and SIM Card with
enhanced features for enabling secure transactional services including online
authentication of identity and financial services.
1.10. To promote synergies between roll-out of broadband
and various Government programs viz e- governance, e-panchayat, MNREGA, NKN,
AADHAR, AAKASH tablet etc.
1.11. To ensure availability of adequate spectrum to meet
current and future demand for microwave access/ backhaul, in appropriate frequency
bands.
1.12. To stimulate the demand of broadband applications
and services, work closely with Department of IT in the promotion of local
content creation in regional languages which would enhance the investment in
All-Internet Protocol (IP) networks including NGN.
1.13. To promote the use of energy efficient equipment
and renewable energy technologies to achieve long term sustainability.
1.14. To undertake periodic review of methodology adopted
for utilising USO fund and benchmarking the same against the best practices
followed in other countries.
1.15. To provide continued support from USO fund for
telecom services, including converged communication services in commercially
unviable rural and remote areas.
2. R&D, MANUFACTURING AND STANDARDIZATION OF
TELECOMMUNICATION EQUIPMENT
2.1. To promote R&D, design, development and
manufacturing in the domestic telecom equipment manufacturing.
2.2. To create a road-map to align technology, demand,
standards and regulations for enhancing competitiveness of domestic
manufacturing.
2.3. To set up a Council consisting of experts from
Telecom Service Providers, Telecom Manufacturing Industry, Government, Academia
and R&D institutions. The Council would:
2.3.1. Carry out technology and product development forecast.
2.3.2. Evolve, and periodically update the national
program for technology/product development.
2.3.3. Be a nodal group to monitor and ensure the
implementation of various recommendations made for promoting indigenous
R&D, IPR creation, and manufacturing and deployment of products and
services.
2.4. To promote synergy amongst manufacturers, R&D
centres, academia, service providers and other stakeholders for achieving
collaboration and reorientation of their efforts for development and deployment
of new products and services suited to Indian environment and meeting security
needs of the country.
2.5. To assist entrepreneurs to develop and commercialize
Indian products by making available requisite funding (pre-venture and venture
capital), management and mentoring support.
2.6. To create fund to promote indigenous R&D,
Intellectual Property creation, entrepreneurship, manufacturing,
commercialising and deployment of state-of-the-art telecom products and
services.
2.7. To promote setting up of Telecommunications Standard
Development Organisation (TSDO) as an autonomous body with effective
participation of the government, industry, R&D centres, service providers,
and academia to drive consensus regarding standards to meet national
requirements including security needs. It will facilitate access for all the
stakeholders in the International Standards Development Organisations and act
as an advisory body for preparation of national contributions for incorporation
of Indian requirement/IPRs/standards in the international standards.
2.8. To notify specific guidelines for according
preference to domestically manufactured telecommunication equipment and
products either for reasons of security or for Government procurement in
accordance with relevant government decisions and policies in this regard.
2.9. To incentivise telecom service providers to use
indigenous products by encouraging:
2.9.1. Commitment to purchase Indigenous products that
are comparable in price and performance to imported products.
2.9.2. Commitment to participate in trials of newly
created Indigenous products, nurture them and place pilot orders.
2.9.3. Funding R&D and support Indian IPR creation
and participate in creation of standards.
2.10. To support Electronic Design and Manufacturing
Clusters for design, development and manufacture of telecommunication
equipment.
2.11. To facilitate provision of appropriate fiscal
incentives through a Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme (M-SIPS) in
manufacturing of telecom equipment.
2.12. To mandate testing and certification of all telecom
products for conformance, performance, interoperability, health, safety,
security, EMF/EMI/EMC, etc. to ensure safe-to-connect and seamless functioning
in the existing and future networks.
2.13. To create suitable testing infrastructure for
carrying out conformance testing, certification and to aid in development of
new products and services. These state-of-the-art labs/infrastructure would be
suitably positioned to make them available to engineering/academic institutions
to assist the scholars in telecom product development.
2.14. To appropriately incentivise export of telecom
equipment and services. Synergies among the various telecom players
(manufacturers and service providers) would be leveraged to provide integrated
communication solutions for exports.
2.15. To facilitate putting in place a stable tax regime
for telecom equipment manufacturing.
2.16. To provide appropriate incentives to the Indian
product manufacturers for domestic deployment and exports.
3. LICENSING, CONVERGENCE AND VALUE ADDED SERVICES
3.1. To orient, review and harmonise the legal,
regulatory and licensing framework in a time bound manner to enable seamless
delivery of converged services in a technology and service neutral environment.
Convergence would cover:
