Govt moots special Spectrum Act in NTP

NEW DELHI, INDIA: With December 9 being the deadline to receive comments on the draft policy for telecom, the government has announced that its fundamental focus is on transparency. The National telecom Policy (NTP) 2011 that would be significant for the entire telecom sector will reach the Cabinet for approval by the end of January 2012.

The government, through this policy framework, will facilitate the industry’s consolidation. The draft that will be transformed into a policy by the end of December will be placed before the empowered Cabinet Committee for necessary approval.

The government is expected to moot a special Spectrum Act in the policy that can provide guidelines to spectrum re-farming, sharing and trading, as well as service licences. The policy also aims to achieve 600 million broadband users by 2020.

Speaking to CIOL, R Chandrashekhar, secretary, Ministry of Communications and IT and Chairman of the Telecom Commission, said the industry players and associations had sought additional time to review the policy draft, therefore the ministry extended the deadline by a month to receive comments.

"The nature of the proposed policy is widespread. With inputs taken from the sector’s stakeholders, we’ll put it into a policy framework by the end of this month. We expect to take it to the Cabinet by the end of January, 2012," informed Chandrashekhar.