my thoughts: National Telecom Policy-2011(Draft)

Kapil Sibal, Minister for Telecommunications and IT released the draft of the National Telecommunications Policy-2011.

Out of all the recommendations,most attention was garnered by the recommendation of abolishing the national roaming;but there are other recommendations as well---

Full Mobile Number Portability
Efforts Towards ‘Right to Broadband’
Affordable and reliable Broadband on demand by 2015 and to achieve 175 million broadband connections by the year 2017 and 600 million by the year 2020 at minimum 2 Mbps download speed and making available higher speeds of atleast 100 Mbps on demand.
To revise the existing broadband download speed of 256 Kbps to 512 Kbps by 2011 and subsequently to 2 Mbps by 2015 and and higher speeds of atleast 100 Mbps thereafter.
300 MHz spectrum to be made available by 2017
Aim to make 500 MHz spectrum available by 2020
Mission is to have special coverage of Remote, Rural areas across India.
Protect consumer interest by promoting informed consent, transparency and accountability in quality of service, tariff, usage etc.
Optimize transmission of services to consumers irrespective of their devices or locations by Fixed-Mobile Convergence thus making available valuable spectrum for other wireless services.
Convergence of services will cover voice, data, video, Internet, VAS
The technology neutral Unified Licenses are envisaged to be in two separate categories : (a) Network Service Operator (NSO)/ Communication Network Service Operator (CNSO) (b) Service Delivery Operator (SDO)/ Communication Service Delivery Operator (CSDO)
To permit resale at retail level like MVNO
De-link licenses issuances & spectrum allocations
Spectrum to be made available at market valuations
Seek TRAI recommendation on license framework
Will allow trading, sharing, pooling of spectrum
Will enact a separate spectrum act
Aim is to have the policy take effect by December 2011