NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Friday laid down the recommendations for the National Telecom Policy (NTP) 2018, which has set a target to attract an investment of$100 billion.
The investment will create two million additional jobs in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector and place India in the top 50 nations in the ICT Development Index by 2022.
The recommendation also reads out to enable access for wireless broadband services at affordable prices, including through satellites to 90 per cent population by 2022 in its objective list. It also aims to achieve 900 million broadband subscriptions and deploy five million public WLAN including Wi-Fi hotspots by 2022.
In order to ramp up internet connectivity, Trai said, there is a need to review National Building Code of India to mandate city developers and builders to have properly demarcated space for housing communication infrastructure in buildings.
Earlier, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had requested Trai to provide policy inputs for the NTP 2018. DoT had said that government plans to finalise the NTP by March end. The new NTP will address the challenges the telecom sector faces today and pave the growth path for it.
The regulatory body has also laid down strategies to realise the recommended objectives. It said that a huge amount of private investment is required in the communication infrastructure and networks and talked about unleashing the power of entrepreneurship for investment, innovation, inclusive development to meet the desired results.
Trai also recommended to put in place an ombudsman based consumer grievance redressal mechanism by end of 2018. The other big recommendation Trai has made is to simplify licensing and regulatory frameworks, rationalise taxes, levies and related compliances by 2019. It also suggested to have an online platform for all government to business (G2B) activities and establish a policy framework for facilitating setting up of data centres by 2019.
Connecting India
NTP aims to achieve 900 million broadband subscriptions and deploy five million public WLAN including Wi-Fi hotspots by 2022