The Department of Telecom will soon present the draft of National Telecom Policy 2018 to the Prime Minister for approval, after which the Department may go for public comments.
Sources close to the development told Business Line that the draft policy will go to the PMO in a week. “We will present the policy to the PMO for approval in a week or so. We are working on it to send it as soon as possible,” a government official said.
The government has been working on NTP 2018 for a year now and according to Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha, the policy is expected to come in the next session of Parliament. According to sources, once the PMO approval comes, the DoT would put it on its website for public comments.
If the PMO has any doubt or clarifications, it might go for a discussion also in Telecom Commission, and then put it on the website for the public comments before it is laid out at the Cabinet. The NTP 2018 will be made to address global requirements and attract investments of around $100 billion by 2022.
TRAI in February had suggested that the NTP 2018 should facilitate ease of doing business through simplification of licensing and regulatory frameworks, rationalisation of taxes, levies and related compliances, and facilitating availability of resources, including spectrum.
It also recommended that under the new policy framework, the telecom sector should be able to generate 20 lakh jobs, achieve 900 million broadband subscriptions with download speed of 2Mbps and connect all gram panchayats with at least 1 Gigabit per second with wireless broadband by 2022, reported Business Line.
