NATIONAL TELECOM POLICY - 2012

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

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, 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.
7. ·        To attract investment, both domestic and foreign. 

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. ·        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.
5. ·        Promote  innovation,  indigenous R&D and manufacturing  to  serve domestic and  globalmarkets, by increasing skills and competencies.
6. ·        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 12^th five year plan period.
7. ·        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.
8. ·        Strive to create One Nation - One License across services and service areas.
9. ·        Achieve One Nation  -  Full  Mobile  Number  Portability  and work towards  One Nation  -Free Roaming.   
10.  ·        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.
11. ·        Promote  an ecosystem for participants in VAS industry value chain to  make India a global hub for Value Added Services (VAS).
12. ·        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.
13. ·        Promote efficient use of spectrum with provision of regular audit of spectrum usage.
14. ·        De-licensing additional frequency bands for public use.
15. ·        Mandate an ecosystem to ensure setting up of a common platform for interconnection of various networks for providing non-exclusive and non-discriminatory access.
16. ·        Enhanced  and continued  adoption of green policy in telecom  and incentivise use of renewable energy sources for sustainability.
17. ·        Strengthen the grievance redressal mechanisms  to provide timely and effective resolution.
18. ·        Put in place appropriate fiscal and financial incentives  required  for  indigenous manufacturers of telecom products and R&D institutions.