In an increasingly knowledge-intensive global situation, telecommunication has emerged as a crucial driver of economic and social progress, and India must take the lead. National Telecom Policy 2012 aims to ensure that India fulfils this role effectively and transforms the socioeconomic landscape through accelerated equitable and inclusive economic growth, with a focus on providing affordable and high-quality telecommunication services in rural and remote areas. This is an endeavour to develop a suitable policy framework to solve these concerns and to transform India by touching the lives of all residents. This article will explain to you about National Telecom Policy which will be helpful in preparing Geography for the UPSC Civil service exam.

Need for National Telecom Policy

• India is one of the world's fastest growing telecom markets.
• Voice is no longer the exclusive mode of communication. Voice, data, and video have all been converted to digital format due to the transition from analogue to digital technology.
• These are increasingly being delivered across single networks, resulting in network, service, and device convergence.
• To improve affordability, increase access, deliver multiple services, and reduce costs, it is critical to move toward convergence between telecom, broadcast, and IT services, networks, platforms, and technologies, and to overcome the existing segregation of licensing, registration, and regulatory mechanisms in these areas.
• It will be a critical enabler of inclusive and equitable growth.
• The strategy seeked to resolve and enable coordinated action in response to the dynamic demands that arise from the convergence of telecommunications, broadcasting, and information technology.
• This is the backdrop in which the National Telecom Policy 2012 (NTP 2012) was conceived.

Vision of National Telecom Policy, 2012

• To make affordable and effective communications available for the citizens.
• To deliver secure and dependable telecommunication services.
• To provide high-quality converged telecommunication services whenever and wherever they are needed for accelerated inclusive socio-economic development.

Objectives of National Telecom Policy, 2012

Mission of National Telecom Policy, 2012

• To build a reliable and secure state-of-the-art telecommunications network that provides seamless coverage, with a special focus on rural and remote areas, in order to bridge the digital gap and enable socioeconomic development.
• To foster an inclusive knowledge society by increasing the availability of low-cost, high-quality broadband services across the country.
• Repositioning the mobile device as a tool for citizen socioeconomic empowerment.
• To establish India as a global hub for the manufacture of telecom equipment and a centre for integrated communication services.
• To encourage R&D and design in cutting-edge technologies, goods, and services in order to address the infrastructure needs of local and international markets, with a focus on security and green technologies.
• To encourage the development of new standards to meet national needs, the generation of intellectual property rights, and participation in international standardisation bodies in order to contribute to the formation of global standards, thereby establishing India as a leader in the field of telecom standardisation.
• To attract both domestic and foreign investment.
• To encourage the development of jobs through all of the aforementioned methods.

Strategies of National Telecom Policy, 2012

The strategies which were followed in theNational Telecom Policy, 2012 are as follows

Broadband, Rural Telephony And Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF)

• Using a suitable combination of optical fibre, wireless, VSAT, and other technologies, to provide dependable and cheap broadband access to rural and remote locations.
• Funding from the Universal Service Obligation Fund will be used to build an optical fibre network up to the village panchayat level (USOF).
• Optical fibre connectivity will be extended from village panchayats to all villages and habitations over time.
• This Optical Fibre Network will be available to everybody, non-discriminatory, and technology agnostic.
• Incentives for rural rollout should be adequate.

R&D, Manufacturing and Standardisation of Telecommunication

• To encourage the establishment of a Telecommunications Standard Development Organisation (TSDO) as an autonomous body with active participation from the government, industry, R&D centres, service providers, and academia.
• This establishment will drive consensus on standards to meet national needs, including security requirements.
• It will make all stakeholders in the International Standards Development Organisations more accessible.
• They also serve as a consultative organisation for the creation of national contributions for the inclusion of Indian requirements, IPRs, and standards in international standards.

Licensing, Convergence And Value Added Services

• To move toward a unified licencing regime in order to reap the benefits of convergence and spectrum liberalisation while also facilitating the decoupling of network licencing from service delivery to end users.
• By sharing active and passive infrastructure, operators will be able to use their networks and spectrum more effectively and efficiently.
• They also aid in the improvement of service quality, the optimization of investments, and the reduction of the digital divide.
• While maintaining enough competition, this new licencing regime will handle the requirements of a fair playing field, rollout commitments, merger and acquisition policy, non-discriminatory interconnection, including interconnection at the IP level, and so on.

Skill Development

• To identify the sector's relevant needs and build a roadmap by collaborating with the National Skill Development Council and industry to assess workforce requirements at various skill and competence levels.
• To provide advice and assistance to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) on how to update the academic curriculum of telecommunication courses on a regular basis.
• To promote and expand vocational and non-formal training institutes in urban and rural areas in order to meet the telecom sector's skill and training demands.
• To encourage partnership with premier educational institutes such as IITs and top-tier telecom research organisations to focus research and development on real-world issues.

Security

• To mandate and enforce that Telecom Service Providers take appropriate measures to protect the security of communication flowing.
• To establish an institutional framework through regulatory measures to ensure that safe-to-connect devices are incorporated.
• To establish standards in the areas of functional needs, safety and security, and all conceivable communication network building components.
• Develop a logical criterion for sharing costs over a threshold limit in adopting security measures between the government and service providers.

Quality of Service And Protection of Consumer Interest

• To strengthen the regulator in order to ensure that Telecom Service Providers adhere to the stipulated performance standards and Quality of Service (QoS) metrics.
• To develop a Code of Practice for Sales and Marketing Communications to promote transparency and solve customer acquisition security concerns.
• To assist the sector regulator in increasing consumer awareness of services, prices, and quality of service.
• Make web-based declaration of area coverage by telecom service providers a legal requirement.

Financing of Telecom Sector

• To establish a Telecom Finance Corporation as a mechanism to mobilise and route funds for telecom projects, thereby facilitating telecom investment.
• To make an effort to incorporate telecom sector projects in the scope of current companies' financing.
• To work towards a stable fiscal framework to boost investments and make services more accessible by rationalising taxes, tariffs, and levies that influence the industry.

Criticisms

• The NTP 2012's most essential feature is that it guarantees everyone access to the internet with a minimum download speed of 2 megabits. However, putting this functionality into practice could be difficult.
• This is due to the fact that India still has a low broadband penetration rate.
• In reality, India's policy on broadband penetration has been a failure so far in this.
• The National Telecom Policy for 2012 pledges to make India a global centre for local manufacturing.
• This is a massive goal, and the policy does not yet specify how it will be accomplished.
• In the draft bill, it is stated that Indian vendors will have preferred market access in order to help India's telecom manufacturing industry grow.
• The Ministry of Commerce, however, dismissed the notion, claiming that preferential market access for Indian vendors would violate India's WTO and GATT agreements.
• Following this, the Department of Telecommunications stated explicitly that the WTO and GATT's concerns would be considered when publishing guidelines and operationalizing them.
• The decoupling of licences and spectrum was envisioned in the NTP 2012.
• It's worth noting that the Supreme Court mandated spectrum auctions in February 2012, therefore spectrum and licence separation is already a reality.
• Several concerns, such as spectrum pricing, reserve prices for prospective 2G auctions, historical pricing of spectrum for operators who have obtained spectrum above 6.2 MHz, and the more recent contentious issues of refarming, have not been addressed by the National Telecom Policy.

Conclusion

India is becoming one of the world's fastest growing telecom markets. The Indian telecom sector's exceptional surge in teledensity and steep drop in pricing have contributed greatly to the country's economic prosperity. Telecommunications, coupled with Information Technology, has substantially boosted the expansion of India's economic and social sectors, contributing around 3% of the country's GDP. However, to address the modern technical breakthroughs like 5G, IoT, M2M, and others in the telecom sector, the new National Digital Communications Policy -2018 replaced the existing National Telecom Policy-2012.