VOICE&DATA has been fortunate to cover earlier telecom policies-NTP '94 and NTP '99.

This time we have taken a proactive step and is recommending policy makers what should be the broad contours of the new policy. We have taken into account all aspects of the telecom industry and have focused not only on spectrum and licensing which takes the maximum time and energy of all Indian operators. All the recommendations are useful and should be looked at from a holistic perspective so that there is synergy between all players in the entire eco-system be it service providers, equipment manufacturers, CPE manufacturers, infrastructure providers, VAS providers, policy makers and investors. We are suggesting that the new telecom policy should be more futuristic and should look at a 15-20 years horizon. NTP 2011 should not only focus on telecom but should focus on ICT so that both departments (IT & Communcations) from the same Ministry (Ministry of Communications & IT) can work in tandem as one without the other cannot help India to move in the fast track. And we need to think in a disruptive way if we plan to achieve the larger goals. NTP 2011 should not act as quick-fix policies so that they can enable players to actively work together for achieving the prime objective within the time frame. The new policy should also have scope for introducing new technologies as and when they come up, making the policy flexible to adopt upcoming technologies. One should also be realistic in futuristic numbers since we already have 17 years experience, so that there is no undue pressure on the industry to complete the objectives of NTP 2011. Let's look at the 10 Point Agenda for NTP 2011. Spectrum & Licensing: Let's Make it Transparent This is the most controversial and most debated topic in country. The industry has always taken a beating due to spectrum & licensing, be it moving from limited mobility to full mobility or providing new licenses for 2G services. One needs to make it as transparent as possible so that the industry can move fast and regain its lost glory. In future, all spectrum should focus on transparent auctioning process and I think the government should follow 3G and BWA auction process which was considered to be non controversial. It is good to have uniform license fee across the circles based on aggregated gross revenue (AGR); and AGR should include revenue only from licensed activities.

The government should focus on having one license for all kinds of services be it access, long distance, broadband and Internet services so that operators can take maximum benefit with respect to convergence. The delinking of license with access spectrum will be good for the industry because it will discourage non serious operators. For spectrum, the government should auction it whenever it is available, making the process more transparent. The government should not levy any license fee on broadband, internet and IP-1 players as they have done in the past; the government should not levy any license fee. All licenses should have rollout obligations be it 3G, BWA and future technologies. The government can come up with time bound rollout slab. Regarding renewal of license it should be based on a fixed fee as decided by the government. The country needs lot of spectrum for access service but the government should also make available sufficient spectrum for back haul connectivity. Merger & Acquisition: Needs Finetuning Policy makers should give high priority to consolidation. In case of merger, the merged entity should not have a market share of more than 30% in the merged circle. This would restrict two large existing operators from merger and would prohibit monopolistic trade practices. Prior approval of the DoT should be taken which should base on the market share, market power and AGR of the intending operators to merge. Broadband: The Time has Come Broadband contributes a lot to the GDP growth of the country. According to one study, a 10% increase in broadband penetration leads to 1.38 percentage increase in per capita GDP growth of any country. So, its importance increases considerably since everybody is looking at India and also internally we are looking at providing inclusive growth. According to Trai, the number of broadband connections in India is 11.21 mn as on January, 2011 against a target of 20 mn by 2010. We are way off the target and so focus should be on how to learn from mistakes and catch up with whatever we have missed. India has to move fast for creating broadband infrastructure in the country and should look at achieving 80 mn by 2015 and 150 mn by 2020.

The National Broadband Plan is a major step for rollout of broadband services across India. The government should finalize a timebound plan for phase-wise rollout of pan India completion by 2015. The government should provide funding support to the National Broadband Plan wherever required so that digital infrastructure can be created across India. The government should also increase broadband speeds from 256 Kbps to 512 Kbps/1 Mbps since rural applications, be it tele-education, tele-health or e-government, will require higher bandwidth so that all future applications related to these verticals can be deployed and the benefits can be passed on to rural consumers. Equal emphasis needs to be given for content development in local languages and this becomes more complex since we have 18 official languages. The government should even formulate guidelines for FTTH (fiber to the home) deployment in the country. Infrastructure: Let's Share Infrastructure has a very big role to play in the Indian context. First, we plan to reach 1 bn subscribers by 2014 and the number will keep on adding as we move forward. Second, new technologies like 3G, 4G and future technologies will demand more towers to be deployed in future. Third, the National broadband Plan will help in deploying either more fibers or towers. Fourth, a robust infrastructure is required for providing reliable services to consumers. So, telecom infrastructure cannot be neglected and should be considered at par with other infrastructure sectors such as water, power, ports, natural gas and others. All benefits availed by other sectors should also be provided to telecom sector. We are presently at around 450,000 towers of which 80% is deployed by IP-1 players and rest by telecom service providers. We plan to add another 250,000 towers in 2 years time and of this majority will go for rural. So, it is estimated that industry would need capex investment of around $20 bn by 2013. Not only this, we would also require a lot more in building systems (IBS) for providing seamless coverage to 3G and 4G; and for this we need to focus more on colocation. The service providers were initially permitted sharing of passive infrastructure like building, tower, dark fiber. However in April 2008, in order to ensure optimum utilization of available resources and to bring down the cost of providing services, the service providers were permitted to share active infrastructures limited to antenna, feeder cable, Node B, Radio Access Network (RAN) and transmission system. The government should encourage sharing of infrastructure and should work with states to come out with simplified and automated RoW (right of way) clearances and evolve uniform RoW fees across towns/cities. For faster deployment of infrastructure, the government should focus on uniform taxes, fees and levies across states and uniform land acquisition procedures. The

government should also encourage creation of fiber to the home assets by independent infrastructure providers. So, in toto, the telecom infrastructure should be viewed as national asset rather as a lucrative option to generate revenue for states. VAS: New Kid on the Block India's broadband (wireline or wireless) success is entirely dependent on what type of content we are planning to provide to service providers. The content can be divided into 3 broad categoriesinfo based services, application based services and enablement based services. With voice revenues declining, operators are banking a lot on VAS for boosting their revenues. All these applications has a huge potential depending on innovation and localization that VAS providers can do since we have 18 official languages in the country. To give a big boost to VAS providers, the government needs to create a Service Delivery Platform (SDP) which will focus on m-education, m-health and m-governance. All this will help in creation of new innovative services for all and providing inclusive growth pan India. The government needs to promote entrepreneurs in the VAS space through special grants for simulating mobile content development in education, health, entertainment and enterprise space. The department can also work out tax holidays for content developers, content aggregators and platform enablers. Rural: Need of the Hour The total subscriber base for rural stands at 267.74 mn as on January 31, 2011 and this contributes around 33% to the total subscriber base of 806.13 mn. The rural teledensity stands at 32.11 vis-a-vis 150.67 of urban teledensity. India has to go a long way wrt rural coverage. On the broadband front, rural is not even in the priority list since the total broadband base stands at 11.21 mn as on January, 2011; Trai does not give break up in terms of rural vs urban. The government should provide broadband coverage to all gram panchayats by 2014 and focus should be also on increasing rural teledensity to 60 from 32 by 2014. Here the government will need to provide some support to service providers if they plan to achieve rural obligations both on voice and broadband numbers. Once the network is in place, the government should focus on creating applications related to health, education, government and banking services. All these applications need to be created in local language so that rural subscribers can use these services resulting in inclusive growth in the country. The government should also focus on non renewable energy source for villages and gram panchayats which do not have electricity connections so that one can deploy network at a faster

pace and not wait for electricity connection to come for those villages. For this to happen, the government will need to work on some sort of subsidy for operators whoever plans to expand their network in those villages. R&D& Manufacturing: Needs Special Thrust We still have a long way to go as we have failed miserably on both R&D & manufacturing though it was one of the key objectives of NTP '99. NTP '99 states strengthening of research and development and providing impetus to building world class manufacturing capabilities in the country. For R&D & manufacturing the industry needs to come out with some concrete plans so that we do not again lag behind in telecom manufacturing vis-a-vis other countries. According to Voice&Data, the communications equipment market is pegged at `136,833 crore in FY 2009-10 and is growing at the rate of 18.6%, and despite this we have still not capitalized on R&D and manufacturing. C-DoT, the premier R&D institute is losing its relevance whereas ITI is dependent on government grants for its survival. Private equipment vendors have set up manufacturing facility in different parts of the country but even they should focus more on indigenisation and componnent sourcing from India.

The government should make it mandatory for vendors to go for equipment sourcing locally and the degree of indigenization should be in the range of around 35% by 2015 and 60% by 2020. The government should encourage large scale EMS manufacturing companies to set up shops in the country with their complete ecosystem. Focus should be also on creating manufacturing clusters in the country and providing them support in terms of free land, tax holidays, excise

duty/sales tax exemption if equipment is sourced locally. Tax benefits on applied research will make manufacturing locally more compeititive vis-a-vis other countries. Even electronics manufacturing needs to be encouraged for creating an ecosystem for manufacturing in the country. The government should also focus on skill development, IPR development and improving competitiveness of domestic manufacturing in the country. Incentives should be even provided to global vendors for setting up local assembly testing and integration facilities in the country. All this will give a big boost to local manufacturing in the country. This will not only open up new job opportunities in the telecom space but also give a big boost to our growing software industry. It will also reduce the cost of telecom equipment in the country so that operators can benefit from it in a big way and we can deploy our products even in rural regions. Apart form this it will also boost R&D in the country since R&D and manufacturing go hand in hand. The government needs to create a R&D fund where both government and industry contribute for the fund. For creating an environment, the government should encourage successful start-up companies to relocate to India, and get educational institutions into the manufacturing ecosystem. TEC also needs to strengthened to have capabilities for all current and future technologies. Monitoring & Security: Go Centralize In India, the number of lawful interceptions decisions is constantly increasing by law enforcement agencies and government bodies to keep crime and terrorism under control. The advent of new technologies, complex nature of network, plethora of services by operators and multiple interception systems is making monitoring more complex. This further gets complicated with the increasing number of intercepts posing considerable challenges for law enforcing agencies and monitoring centers leading to error and delays during the activation of lawful interception or collection of interception data. Not only this, the authorities demand an immediate overview of all intercepts to facilitate analysis and statistics of all India lawful interception activity. So from a standalone operator based LIMS (lawful interception and monitoring system), the government should move to a centralized monitoring system conforming to global practices. This will help in providing end-to-end monitoring of all networks and also entire suite of services provided by all operators in the country. The centralized system will be helpful in creating a pan India database for all intercepts and doing security audits, zero performance loss, reduction in cost for law enforcing agencies and service provider, increasing reliability of lawful interception and network, bringing transparency and providing future extensions whenever new set of operators come along with their innovative services. For LIMS, the government should form an independent body called Security Council of India which will monitor end-to end network security requirements pan India and provide comprehensive network, service and application level security. SCI should look at all kinds of

security whether data, voice or video. SCI should come under Ministry of Home Affairs and should work with service providers, vendors and academicians. Green Technologies: Let's Go Commercial We need to make headway in green technologies at all levels be it service providers, handset vendors and infrastructure providers. The process has started but it is limited to few companies and few state/cities, and is being conducted mainly as pilot projects. So we need to move from pilot stage to commercial deployments and that's where industry needs to innovate. The availability of power and its quality will continue to impede the growth of telecom industry considering the fact that we are going to witness a lot of infrastructure growth in rural sector; since rural teledensity howers around 32.11 vis-a-vis urban teledensity of 150.67. And the rural sector is the most deprived geography in terms of power. From a business perspective, the current scenario is not going to help the telecom industry in the long term as tower companies are spending more than $1.4 bn annually for operating expenditure on towers. Also, for telecom operators the cost expenditure on energy is becoming as large as 25% of the total network operations costs. Around 70% of telecom towers are in rural areas, where grid connected electricity is not available and as a result, a very large chunk of the towers are powered by diesel generators which produce a total of 5.3 mn litres of carbon dioxide every year. Due to this high dependence on diesel the operational costs of these cell sites increase drastically to about 200% more than those where grid power availability is regular. So, operators are left with no other option but to opt for for alternate power supply solutions like wind power, solar power, hybrid or bio-diesel solutions. The prime reason for non deployment of clean energy is the high cost of deployment of these energy sources and the long return on investment period. Govenrment should support technology R&D, promote investment in cleaner technology by providing some incentives for telecom companies. Consumer Awareness: Still not a Priority In India, consumers, whether enterprise users or end consumers does not have any forum for complaints redressal in the present set up. What we have is telecom ombudsman represented by senior executives of the company and grievance redressal through consumer court and representation in TDSAT through group of susbcribers. But all these have not been able to provide the desired result. The government should seriously think of protecting rights of consumers which would be a great service to the nation by the policy makers. All this will not only help them in getting a fair deal not only in terms of cheap services but also with respect to quality of service and as per service

level agreements as discussed during the initiation of the service. For consumer awareness, the government should focus on two aspects-protecting rights of consumers and also empowering them for all technologies and services since all future technologies focuses on quality of experience. The service providers should be mandated to to increase transparency and increase consumer information about consumer services and enterprise services so that service providers can ensure improved quality of service and India should be known not only for cheaper services but also for world class quality service. For the sake of citizens, the government should also promote one emergency number similar to that of 911 in US, 112 in Europe and 119 in Japan. This will solve lot of our problems as we have to dial one number irrespective of our location and thereby saving precious life. Pravin Prashant pravinp@cybermedia.co.in