The Cabinet on Thursday approved a new telecom policy that proposes to abolish roaming charges on mobile phones and allow users to retain the same number across the country.
The Cabinet approved the National Telecom Policy (NTP) 2012, a senior minister told reporters after the meeting of the Cabinet.
The NTP 2012
aims to provide free roaming to telecom users and allow them to retain
the mobile number even outside their circles without having to pay any
extra charge.
At
present, users have to pay extra when they receive or make a call in a
circle outside their home network, called roaming charges.
Also mobile number portability is not permitted outside circle.
The new policy aims to provide on demand broadband for all citizens and increase rural teledensity to 100% by 2020.
The country overhauled its telecom rules after the once-booming sector was hit by a massive scandal over
telecom's licence grants in 2008, which a state auditor estimated to
have cost New Delhi as much as $34 billion in lost revenue.
The
new policy, which will separate licences and airwaves and will allow
sharing of airwaves among carriers, also seeks to facilitate
consolidation in the crowded market.
Pricing of airwaves is, however, not part of the telecom policy, and will be set through an open auction process.
Under
NTP 2012, it has been proposed to de-link spectrum from licences,
reduce number of different licences, give industry liberal mergers and
acquisition norms and remove roaming charges burden from consumers. They
will also be allowed to retain same number across country.
Source:- The Economic Times
