Bangalore: The union cabinet is mulling over to approve a new telecom policy for the country on Thursday, the government is aiming to empower India with a stable telecom infrastructure across the country. But how will this news policy help enterprises? Shubra Rishi of CIO.IN asked Katyayan Gupta, Telecom Analyst and Connectivity Lead, Forrester, on his analysis on this new development.

So what are the new changes in the new policy which are different from the old policy?

Gupta says that the government has taken the initiative of establishing a pro-future policy with the announcement of the unified licensing regime.

Gupta said “Earlier, spectrum used to come bundled with the purchase of a license. So, for example, with the purchase of a license, an operator could get 5 Mhz of spectrum. With the introduction of the new telecom policy, a telecom company can buy a license and use it to roll out services in any part of the country, but now they would have to shell out extra for buying the spectrum.  

Secondly, earlier, the government defined the technology, the service (voice, data, or video) provided in a particular spectrum. But making the spectrum technology-agnostic gives more power to the operator. Now an operator can pick the spectrum and decide the technology they wish to implement in order to provide the service without being regulated by the government.” reports CIO.IN

Key points in the new Telecom Policy that are likely to impact Indian Enterprises

Gupta in his interview to Rishi highlighted that the new policy will be beneficial to enterprises, as an operator of the telecom enterprise would now not require 22 licenses in 22 different circles. “They can buy a single license as well as spectrum to deploy their services in a technology of the operator’s choice. Also at the service level, an operator can resell its licenses to a third-party operator which will further provide service to its consumers. It transforms into a positive advantage for the operators” said Gupta.

Moreover, with the governments plan of increasing minimum broadband speed from 512 kbps to 2 Mbps by the year 2015 will eventually result in enterprises having faster access to data and increasing their productivity.