Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan has said that the ministry of communications will set up working groups and committees to start ground work on a new application-driven telecom policy (NTP) which is expected to come up in 2018. She also noted that the new policy will focus on areas such as Internet for all, next-generation technologies (like 5G and Internet of Things), skills development, and security, among others.
Sundararajan has said that the ministry will initiate the ‘widest possible public consultation’ involving the industry, and that a series of regional workshops have also been planned to get inputs from local stakeholders on the new policy. She also said that they will be in touch with Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for their policy inputs also. In addition, she said that they will be working intensively on the policy over the next three to four months.
Further, the Telecom Secretary has said that the department is also considering setting up telecom Computer Emergency Response Team or CERT. She said “we intend to start work on its soon...as telecom industry grows and telecom network security becomes more important, we will need a dedicated organisation which can look into the aspects of that.” She added that the standards for telecom security and the modalities of emergency response mechanism would be part of the new architecture of the telecom CERT.
