The government may soon consider the telecom industry’s demand of doing away with telecom circles and will work towards the concept of one nation, one network and one licence.
To communicate this, Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan on Wednesday met telecom operators, infrastructure providers and handset makers here.
Sources close to the development said Sundararajan has assured the industry that the government is committed to bring in changes that will enhance the ease of doing business in the country.
“There will have to be a significant amount of administrative reform in the Telecom Ministry so thatwe are able to actually move to some of the things like one nation (one network and one license policy),” Sundararajan told reporters when asked on the sidelines of an Assocham event here.
However, she added that such things can’t happen overnight, but can be put into policy. “What I am saying is that we will endeavour to put it into the policy. We will provide the necessary movement. Others can be the low-hanging fruit and they can be done straight away.”
She said the government’s approach in the national telecom policy (NTP) will ‘facilitate and enable’ the sector and that regulation should be such that it incentivises fresh investment. “It will be our (government’s) endeavour to see how we can secure a viable rate of return for the industry,” she said.
India is not just following but setting best practices in many areas in terms of NTP 2018, she said, adding that “this is something where India is actually ahead of the rest of the world.”
She also said the NTP is going to be a key building block in achieving the vision to grow at about 10 per cent from current rate of about 7.6 per cent.