Draft NTP 2018 to be in public domain in the next two to three weeks: Sundararajan

Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan recently has said the draft National Telecom Policy (NTP) 2018 is likely to be in the public domain in the next two to three weeks.

" A draft National Telecom Policy 2018 that is liberal and non-prescriptive in its licensing approach in Machine to Machine (M2M) communication is being given final touches. The policy should be in the public domain in the next two to three weeks for discussion and responses from stakeholders, Sundararajan said at the launch of a FICCI-EY report on "M2M -- Changing lives of 130 crore Indians".

She stressed that NTP 2018 would be transformative in harnessing the full benefits of M2M communications.

While launching the report which provides inputs to the government on M2M communications to help formulate the M2M policy framework, Sundararajan said that in the M2M framework the focus would be on low-cost manufacturing, where exciting innovation is already happening.

To recall, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has also issued its recommendations for the National Telecom Policy (NTP) 2018 in which the regulator said that the telecom sector should attract investments of about $100 billion by 2022.

It said that the objective of the NTP 2018 would be to enable access at affordable prices for wireless broadband services, including through satellite to 90 percent population by 2022 and to achieve 900 million broadband subscriptions supporting download speed of 2 Mbps, out of that at least 150 million broadband subscriptions supporting download speed of 20 Mbps and 25 million at a download speed of 50 Mbps by 2022.

According to TRAI's recommendation to the telecom department, a review of telco license fees, spectrum usage charges (SUC), Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) levy to enhance the overall ease of doing business. Furthermore, the regulator in its recommendations also mentions that the objective of the policy would also be to provide 1Gbps data connectivity to all Gram Panchayats to enable wireless broadband services to inhabitants by 2022.