New telecom policy eyes RS 6.5 lakh cr investments

​New Delhi: The Telecom Commission on Wednesday approved net neutrality rules which bar service providers from discriminating against Internet content and services by blocking, throttling or granting them higher speed access. Some mission critical applications or services like remote surgery and autonomous cars will however be kept out of the purview of net neutrality framework. 

"The Telecom Commission (TC) approved net neutrality as recommended by Trai expect some critical services will be kept out of its purview," Telecom Commission Chairman Aruna Sundararajan told reporters here. 
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had recommended restrictions on service providers from entering into agreements which lead to discriminatory treatment of content on the Internet. Trai had favoured tweaking of licensing norms of players to ensure "explicit restrictions" on discrimination in Internet access, based on content. 

The Department of Telecom will set-up a multi-stakeholder body for monitoring and enforcement of net neutrality comprising government representatives, IoT providers, telecom operators, civil society members and consumer organisations. DoT will seek recommendations from Trai on traffic management for critical services. TC also approved the new telecom policy - National Digital Communications Policy (NDCP) 2018 - for seeking approval of the Union Cabinet, Sundararajan said. 

"Everybody in the meeting today said that digital infrastructure is even more important than physical infrastructure for India. CEO of Niti Ayog (Amitabh Kant) said that for districts, we must ensure digital infrastructure is provided at the earliest. Therefore, India must have ease of doing business and enabling policy environment," she said.

The NDCP aims to attract $100 billion or about Rs 6.5 lakh crore investments, 40 lakh new jobs, 50 megabit per second broadband access to every citizen in the digital communications sector by 2022 with the help of reforms.