“The telecom policy has been approved now for sending to Cabinet (in two weeks),” said Aruna Sundararajan, telecom secretary and chairperson of the Telecom Commission, the highest decision-making body of the Ministry of Communications, after a nearly two-hour long meeting on Wednesday.
“All members said that digital infrastructure is even more important than physical infrastructure for India, including CEO of Niti Aayog (Amitabh Kant) who said that for the aspirational states, we must ensure that digital infrastructure is provided at the earliest. Therefore, India must have ease of doing business and an enabling policy environment for fresh investments,” she added.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will create an inhouse monitoring mechanism to track and review the implementation of the new policy — the National Digital Communications Policy (NDCP) — which will have enabling provisions for rationalising levies of the telecom sector that pays a third of every rupee earned to the government in the form of taxes or charges.
Specific proposals to rationalise the levies will be created and considered after the Cabinet approval.
Under NDCP 2018, the government plans to optimally price spectrum, review levies such as license fees and spectrum usage charges as well as M&A rules to ease exits while also taking a fresh look at spectrum sharing, leasing and trading guidelines, as part of its approach that spectrum is a key natural resource which is to be used for public benefit, besides seeking investments in billions of dollars.
Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), which represents all carriers, said that the forward-looking policy promises to usher India into a new era of digital communications, thereby making the prime minister’s Digital India dream a reality.
“NDCP 2018 is a welcome step for the industry with ambitious targets… speed in implementation will be the key to achieve the set-out goals,” said Mritunjay Kapur, leader of telecom, media and technology at KPMG India.
But senior executives of the industry,which isbearing theburden of heavy financial losses — debt of nearly ₹8 lakh crore amid large scale consolidation and never-ending tariff wars, are sceptical of the policy achieving all its targets.
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