India’s Draft New Telecom Policy 2011: The Policy That Could Change India’s Digital Business Forever

• On 10th Oct 2011 communications minister Kapil Sibal unveiled the new telecom policy.

• The new policy is going to revolutionize the telecom secctor.

• The policy mainly focuses on the licensing regime.

• The Draft NTP-2011 suggests the creation of technology neutral Unified Licenses (under the One Nation-One License) policy, that is envisaged in two separate categories –

1. the Network Service Operator / Communication Network Service Operator (CNSO), which is licensed to maintain converged networks for delivering “various types of services e.g. Voice, Data, Video, broadcast, IPTV, VAS etc.”, very importantly, in a non-exclusive and non-discriminatory manner.

2. The second would be a Service Delivery Operator (SDO) / Communication Service Delivery Operator (CSDO), who would be licensed to deliver any/ all services e.g. tele-services (voice, data, video), internet/broadband, broadcast services, IPTV, Value Added Service and content delivery services etc.

• The new policy is likely to be approved by June 2012.

Key Targets:

1. Create knowledge based society through proliferation of broadband –provide 'broadband on demand' by 2015. Achieve target of 175 million broadband users by 2017 and 600 million by 2020.

2. To promote R&D & product development in telecom

3. To make India a global hub for telecom equipment manufacturing

4. Increase rural tele-density from 35% to 60% by 2017 and to 100% by 2020.

5. 80% of telecom networks to be domestically manufactured by 2020.

Consumer initiatives:

1. Abolish roaming charges

2. Mobile Number Portability, which is currently restricted to a circle-level basis, to be enhanced to allow consumers to retain their mobile numbers when they move to a new city or any location in the country without having to pay 'roaming charges'.

3. Strengthen grievance redressal mechanisms.

4. Broadband speeds to be revised to 512 kbps & further to 2 Mbps by 2015 & 100 Mbps by 2020.

5. Regulator to enhance consumer awareness on tariffs, services.

6. Strengthen consumer protection act.

Spectrum:

1. Free up 300 MHz of airwaves for commercial telephony by 2017 & another 200 MHz of spectrum by 2020

2. All future spectrum allocations will be priced at market rates

3. Allow spectrum pooling, sharing & trading

4. Prepare a roadmap for spectrum availability for next 5 years

5. Reserve small amounts of spectrum in certain frequencies for indigenous development of products & technologies

6. Enact 'Spectrum Act', to deal with all issues connected with mobile permits, including re-farming, pricing of this resource, withdrawal of allotted spectrum and norms for sharing and trading.

7. To promote use of white space with low power devices

For mobile permits:

1. To frame an exit policy for new entrants to surrender their mobile permits & airwaves

2. Delink licence from spectrum. Make mobile permits technology neutral and divide them into 2 categories – Network Service Operator & Service Delivery Operator

3. Allow sharing of networks

4. Regulate value added services, especially the carriage charge

5. To provide clear rules for renewal of all mobile permits

6. To put in place legal, regulatory and licensing framework for convergence of services, networks and devices

7. Move towards an unified licensing regime that will allow operators to offer any service

8. Address the Right of Way issues in setting up of telecom infrastructure

9. Relaxed M&A norms to allow consolidation

Telecom infrastructure issues:

1. Recognizing telecom as infrastructure sector

2. Facilitate increased use of green tech for powering towers

3. Reducing carbon footprint of telecom sector

Security:

1. Develop and deploy systems for lawful assistance

2. Service providers to ensure security of network and data flowing in it

3. Building capacity for lawful interception and monitoring

4. Standardisation of telecom equipment

5. Govt and private sector to share cost of implementing security measures

Skill Development:

1. Promote training institutes in rural and urban areas

2. Encourage collaboration with IITs and other institutes

3. Form a high-level apex body – industry, academia and PSUs - to oversee skill development

Finance:

1. Create telecom finance corporation to facilitate investment in the sector

2. Rationalise taxes affecting the sector to make services more affordable

New Technology and data use:

1. Review encryption, security, taxation, interconnection issues

2. To take steps to reduce cost of service delivery

3. Transition from IPv4 to IPv6; encourage applications and R&D on IPv6

4. Formulate policy on Cloud services

5. Adopt best practices on privacy, network security, law enforcement assistance, prevention of cross border data flow

Role of regulator and DoT restructuring:

1. Strong and independent regulator with more powers

2. Review Indian telegraph act with stakeholders

3. DoT to look after licensing and spectrum allocation, ministry to focus on policy making

4. Strengthen DoT units to monitor and enforce licence conditions

5. Strengthen public grievances cell

Source:

1. The Economic Times

2. MediaNama