The Union Cabinet has approved a new telecom policy -- the National Digital Communications Policy (NDCP) 2018, which aims to attract $100 billion in investments and create four million jobs in the telecom sector by 2022. That apart, the policy also envisages 50 Mbps of broadband connectivity to every citizen in five years. Telecom minister Manoj Sinha has said that things have very rapidly evolved in the sector and hence new policy has been made to address emerging technology areas like 5G, Internet of Things and machine to machine communication.
The minister has said that the government wants to focus on socio-economic growth of the country with the help of the telecom sector instead of seeing it as source of revenue generation. He noted that the NDCP proposes to adopt Optimal Pricing of Spectrum to ensure sustainable and affordable access to digital communications. He pointed out that high spectrum price and related charges have been the main concern of the telecom services segment, which is reeling under a debt of Rs 7.8 lakh crore.
Sinha further said that some of the objectives of the NDCP 2018 include providing broadband access to all, creating 40 lakh new jobs, and increasing India’s ranking in the global ICT Index to 50th spot. He also expressed hopes that the policy will boost the sector’s contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 8 percent from 6 percent in 2017. He added that the global average of telecom sector contribution to GDP is 4.5 percent and sector at present contributes around 6.5 percent to India’s GDP.
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