New telecom policy to ‘ensure net neutrality principles are upheld’, proposes ombudsman

The department of telecom on Tuesday put out the draft National Digital Communications Policy 2018 for public consultation, pointing out that the “task before India’s policymakers is to ensure that the advantages of new technologies are accessible to all equitably and affordably; while securing them against existing and emerging threats”.

To this end, the new telecom policy aims to ensure broadband coverage at 50 mbps for every citizen and attract $100 billion investment in the sector by 2022.

The 2022 goals include ensuring that “net neutrality principles are upheld and aligned with service requirements, bandwidth availability and network capabilities”.

It also recognises spectrum as a “key natural resource for public benefit” to achieve India’s socio-economic goals, and optimise availability and utilisation for the new broadband era. Promising a transparent and fair mode of spectrum allocation, it aims to develop a fair, flexible and simple method for spectrum assignment and “optimal pricing of spectrum”.

“Further liberalising the spectrum sharing, leasing and trading regime, coordinating with government departments for freeing underutilised/substitutable spectrum, and its auctioning and/or assignment along with unutilised spectrum for efficient and productive use,” the draft says.

To protect consumers’ interests, institutional mechanisms have been proposed, including a telecom ombudsman and a centralised web-based complaint redressal system.

By 2022, the draft talks about the creation of 40 lakh jobs and enhance the contribution of the digital communications sector to 8 per cent of GDP from about 6 per cent in 2017.

“The stakeholders and public are requested to kindly go through the draft policy and give their comments/inputs to make (it) a robust document and an enabler for achieving the desired goals,” the DoT said.