New telecom policy likely to be ready by July

The new telecom policy is expected to be cleared by the Cabinet by the end of next month, Communications Minister Manoj Sinha said on Tuesday.

"I am hopeful of getting Cabinet approval on NDCP by end of July," he said.

The government has recently issued draft of the National Digital Communications Policy (NDCP) 2018 which aims to provide access to every household with download speed of 50 Mbps, attract investment of around Rs 6.5 lakh crore in the sector and create 4 million new job opportunities with a few years.

Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said that the draft of the policy will be placed before the Telecom Commission — the apex decision making body at the DoT in its meeting on June 29.

The commission is also likely to discuss net-neutrality and framework for roll-out of new technology machine-to-machine communications.

"When this government came to power, the biggest challenge in telecom was

that the whole sector was a victim of trust deficit, there was turmoil. In last four years we have restored confidence, brought transparency and established good governance," Sinha said.

He cited the government's efforts in ease of doing business, broadband for all and progress on the BharatNet project to connect all gram panchayats to underscore the achievements of his ministry.