“Broadband For All” in India at a minimum download speed of 2 Mbps

Just today my friend flashed me the press release from Govt of India “National Telecom Policy-2012 and Unified Licensing Regime“. We have been hearing and reading about the “National Telecom Policy” for a while now. While the entire nation has been accusing the Govt of India for not functioning the Union Cabinet today approved the National Telecom Policy -2012 (NTP – 2012).

The thrust areas of NTP – 2012 are;

• Increase rural teledensity from the current level of around 39 to 70 by the year 2017 and 100 by the year 2020
• Repositioning of Mobile phone – as an instrument of empowerment
• Broadband –“’Broadband For All” at a minimum download speed of 2 Mbps.
• Domestic Manufacturing- Making India a global hub
• Liberalisation of Spectrum – any Service in any Technology
• Simplification of Licensing regime- Unified Licensing, delinking of Spectrum from License, Online real time submission and processing
• Consumer Focus – Achieve One Nation – Full Mobile Number Portability and work towards One Nation – Free Roaming
• Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP)
• Cloud Computing, Next Generation Network including IPV6

A little surprised to see “cloud computing” in the list. Good to see the long term view the government has. Of this I really care only about the broadband implementation. The goal is to grow the broadband user base from the current 13.79 million connections to 175 million users by 2017 and 600 million by 2020.

Medianama says,

To reach the 160 million target by 2017, India will have to add 2.44 million broadband subscribers each month and roughly 7.33 million broadband subscribers every month to reach 600 million subscribers target by 2020, after achieving its target to reach 160 million.

Have heard enough from our Ministers about the National Broadband plan, time for the actual implementation. It would be worth while to have a Minister for Internet in India.