Proposes to abolish roaming charges and allow users to retain same number across the country.
The government today cleared National Telecom Policy 2012 that aims to abolish roaming charges thus allowing mobile phone subscribers to use same number across country without having to pay extra charges.
"Target is one nation full mobile number portability and work towards one nation free roaming," Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal told reporters after the Cabinet gave approval to NTP.
The Department of Telecom (DoT) will now start process to implement full mobile number portability allowing users to retain their existing number at the time of changing their service providers across any state in the country.
However, consumers will have to wait for some time before roaming charges are abolished and one-number-one-nation concept implement as DoT will first work out modalities of the new scheme before it is brought into force.
The NTP 2012 envisages increasing penetration of telecom services in rural area from current level of around 39 to 70% by 2017 and 100% by the year 2020.
Under the new policy broadband speed has been increased to minimum of 2 megabit per second (mbps). This change will come into force with immediate effect.
With the new policy getting approved, telecom licences have been delinked from spectrum which was earlier bundled with the licences.
The NTP 2012 will allow operators to provide services based on any technology by using airwaves and will not restrict them to use it for particular service using any specific frequency band.
At present, there are frequencies which are specifically used for providing GSM or CDMA services as per the permit given to the companies.
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