National
Telecom Policy-2012 is designed to ensure that India plays this role effectively
and transforms the socio-economic scenario through accelerated equitable and inclusive
economic growth by laying special emphasis on providing affordable and quality telecommunication
services in rural and remote areas. Thrust of this po licy is to underscore the
imperative that sustained adoption of technology would offer viable options in overcoming
developmental challenges in education, health, employment generation, financial
inclusion and much else. NTP-2012 is an initiative to create a conducive policy framework to address these
issues and to touch lives of all citizens and transform India. By formulating a
clear policy regime, NTP-2012 endeavors to create an investor friendly environment
for attracting additional investments in the sector apart from generating manifold
employment opportunities in various segments of the sector. Availability of affordable and effective
communications for the citizens is at the core of the vision and goal of the National
Telecom Policy – 2012.
The
National Telecom Policy was adopted by the cabinet on May 31, 2012. It
was released in public domain later in June.
VISION
The policy envisions
providing secure, reliable, affordable and high quality converged
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, generationof 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.
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 globalmarkets, 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 of60% and 80% with a minimum value addition of 45% and 65% by the year 2017 and2020 respectively.
- · 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.
- · 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.
- · Promote an ecosystem for participants in VAS industry value chain to make India a global hub for Value Added Services (VAS).
- · 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.
- · Promote efficient use of spectrum with provision of regular audit of spectrum usage.
- · De-licensing additional frequency bands for public use.
- · Mandate an ecosystem to ensure setting up of a common platform for interconnection of various networks for providing non-exclusive and non-discriminatory access.
- · Enhanced and continued adoption of green policy in telecom and incentivise use of renewable energy sources for sustainability.
- · Strengthen the grievance redressal mechanisms to provide timely and effective resolution.
- · Put in place appropriate fiscal and financial incentives required for indigenous manufacturers of telecom products and R&D institutions.