National Digital Communications Policy-2018

Need for the policy

  • The contribution of digital communication sector stands as 8% to the GDP.
  • This sector is also envisioned as a sunrise industry to cater the job demands of young engineers and other networking technicians.
  • New digital communication policy to draw $100Billion investment and 4million jobs.
  • Emerging technologies such as 5G and internet of things (IoT) requires a new consumer centric and application centric policy.
  • The new policy aims at proliferation of telecom services and also facilitates low-cost financing to this sector.

Highlights of the policy

  • The NDCP-2018 envisions supporting India’s transition to a digitally empowered economy and society by fulfilling the information and communications needs of citizens and enterprises by establishment of a ubiquitous, resilient and affordable digital communications infrastructure and services.
  • The ‘Customer focused’ and ‘application driven’ NDCP-2018 shall lead to new ideas and innovations, after the launch of advanced technology such as 5G, IOT, M2M, etc. which shall govern the telecom sector of India.
  • The policy will accord telecom infrastructure the status of “critical and essential infrastructure”, which would smoothen operations at the state and municipality level and also recognize optic fibre cables as a “public utility”.
  • The policy has also announced goals such as deployment of five million public Wi-Fi hot spots by 2020 and 10 million by 2022 through a National Broadband Mission, apart from implementing a “Fibre First Initiative” to take fibre to the home.
  • The government also aims to enable infrastructure convergence for IT, telecom and broadcasting by amending the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, and other relevant laws, apart from formulating a policy on encryption and data retention.

Location: Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India

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