India sees $100 bn investment in digital communication space by 2022
26 Sep 2018
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The government today approved the National Digital Communications Policy -2018, which aims to provide universal broadband services to connect, propel and secure the country.
The Digital Communications policy seeks to ensure universal broadband connectivity at 50 Mbps to every citizen, 1 Gbps connectivity to all gram panchayats and connectivity to all uncovered areas, generating investments to the tune of $100 billion in the digital communications space by 2022.
The union cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the National Digital Communications Policy-2018 (NDCP-2018) and the re-designation of the Telecom Commission as the `Digital Communications Commission’.
The NDCP-2018 envisions supporting India's transition to a digitally empowered economy and society by fulfilling the information and communications needs of citizens and enterprises by establishment of a ubiquitous, resilient and affordable digital communications infrastructure and services.
The ‘customer focused’ and ‘application driven’ NDCP-2018 is expected to lead to new ideas and innovations, after the launch of advanced technology such as 5G, IOT, M2M, etc, which shall govern the telecom sector of India.
The key objectives of the policy are:
- Providing broadband connectivity for all;
- Creating 4 million additional jobs in the digital communications sector;
- Enhancing the contribution of the digital economy to India’s GDP to 8 per cent from 6 per cent in 2017;
- Propelling India to the top 50 nations in the ICT development index from 134 in 2017;
- Enhancing India's contribution to global value chains; and
- Ensuring digital sovereignty.
These objectives are to be achieved by 2022.
Towards this, the government proposes to train one million persons for building New Age Skill and expand IoT ecosystem to 5 billion connected devices.
It is proposed to establish a comprehensive data protection regime for digital communications that safeguards the privacy, autonomy and choice of individuals.
The government will facilitate India's effective participation in the global digital economy, enforce accountability through appropriate institutional mechanisms to assure citizens of safe and secure digital communications infrastructure and services.
To achieve these, the policy advocates the establishment of a National Digital Grid by creating a National Fibre Authority and the creation of Common Service Ducts and utility corridors in all new city and highway road projects.
The policy envisages a collaborative institutional mechanism between centre, states and local bodies for common rights of way, standardisation of costs and timelines, removal of barriers to approvals and facilitating development of open access next generation networks.
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