On Thursday, 31st May, the cabinet approved the National Telecom Policy 2012 to replace a decade old legislation. The new “one nation – one number” policy proposes to make roaming free for mobile users across the nation and allows the users to retain the same number in any part of the country, except Jammu and Kashmir and north-east.
At present, incoming and outgoing calls for mobile users are charged (roaming charges) and mobile number portability is not permitted outside the state /telecom circle.
Other salient features of the National Telecom Policy (NTP) – 2012 are :
- Increase rural tele-density from the current level of around 39 to 70 by the year 2017 and 100 by the year 2020
- Repositioning of Mobile phone as an instrument of empowerment
- Broadband -”‘Broadband For All” at a minimum download speed of 2 Mbps
- Domestic Manufacturing – Making India a global hub
- Convergence of Network, Services and Devices
- Liberalisation of Spectrum – any Service in any Technology
- Simplification of Licensing regime – Unified Licensing, delinking of Spectrum from License, Online real time submission and processing
- Consumer Focus – Achieve One Nation – Full Mobile Number Portability and work towards One Nation – Free Roaming
- Resale of Services
- Voice over Internet Protocol
- Cloud Computing, Next Generation Network including IPV6
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