The Indian government should consider granting ‘critical infrastructure’ status to active and passive infrastructure in telecommunications and broadband sector, according to a report prepared by consultancy major KPMG and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), an Indian industry body.
The report, titled ‘Ringing in Changes: A Review of India’s Draft National Telecom Policy – 2011’, states that according such a status may aid in comprehensively addressing requirement of uniform policies to address speedy rollout, funding, pricing, taxation, competition and security matters in the sector.
“Indian Telecom Policy is a unique opportunity for the GoI to make a difference to every citizen of India. All stakeholders are set to gain in achieving the vision of providing the people of India with high quality, reliable, affordable converged telecommunications services,” the report states.
The report also suggests a number of things that the government may consider. This include:
- Detailed policy outline on migration of existing licenses and spectrum to new licensing framework, pricing of existing 2G spectrum at the time of migration and the policy on exit of licensees currently and in the future.
- Consolidation policy that defines merger of licenses and spectrum and harmonization with other statutory and regulatory pronouncements.
- Policy on the manner in which market prices for spectrum is determined.
- Policy pronouncement on liberalization of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the sector.
The report also states that the preferential status conferred on telecom manufacturing, coupled with the tax reliefs proposed to players are in the right direction to make India a telecom manufacturing hub.
