National Telecom Policy to be in public domain soon: DoT

Girja Shankar Kaura

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 7

Days after telecom regulator TRAI said the present framework for calculation of licence fee and spectrum usage charges (SUC) requires review, the DoT today said the 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, said Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, DoT, Ministry of Communications, today.

TRAI in its recommendations had also said the new NTP should ensure that the licensing framework provides sufficient space for experimentation and innovation.

At the launch of FICCI-EY report on  ‘M2M — changing lives of over 130 crore Indians’, Sundararajan said, “M2M is the next big opportunity for India in terms of its impact and the quantum change that it will bring about in the quality of services and delivery. The favourable impact of M2M on job creation had already set in as seen by the arrival of the first set of startups in areas such as agriculture, smart cities, healthcare and water management”.

Review of present framework 

• TRAI had recently said the present framework for calculation of licence fee and spectrum usage charges requires review
• It had also said the new NTP should ensure that the licensing framework provides sufficient space for experimentation and innovation