Indian Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal on Saturday said that the government will form a new National Telecom Policy (NTP) this year in an effort to make the recently-scam-wrought sector more transparent in 2011.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of announcing a 100-day roadmap for his Ministry here on Saturday, Sibal said that since NTP’99 was 11 years old already, the government is working towards developing NTP 2011.
While clarity and transparency seem to be the keywords for the new policy, reasonable revenue for government, affordable services to users and robust growth of the sector would decide the policy, he said.
He also promised a firm but industry-friendly set of points in the policy.
The announcement comes in the wake of the 2G spectrum allocation controversy where the government’s auditor charged former telecom minister A Raja of causing a loss worth Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the government which forced him to step down.
On Saturday, Sibal also told reporters that his Ministry has already collected Rs 73.73 crore as penalty from telecom operators, which include Etisalat DB, Loop Telecom, Uninor, Sistema-Shyam and Aircel, for missing their network roll-out deadlines.
“Total penalty is about Rs. 219 crore for missing roll-out obligations. We had generated demand for over Rs. 78 crore of which the operators have submitted Rs. 73.73 crore,” he said.
On the number portability issue, Sibal said that the country-wide launch of MNP tops DoT’s priority list and security issues among other technical factors were being ironed out.
Key stakeholders are likely to play a consultative role to evolve the policy covering licencing, spectrum allocation, tariffs, linkage with roll-out performance, spectrum sharing, trading and mergers and acquisition.
Sibal was, however, non-committal on the possible changes that would be made to the existing NTP’99 policy in respect of allocation of spectrum on a first-come first-serve basis.
The minsiter also emphasised that spectrum needs to be made available to meet the increasing demand in the telecom sector.