NTP 2012: Will broadband speed be upgraded to 2 Mbps in 2015?

Two years back the groundbreaking National Telecom Policy 2012 was made which was set to transform telecommunications in India for new digital era. While the government managed to implement some of the recommendations, most of them are still just on paper. One of the key recommendations of the policy was to increase minimum broadband speed to 512kbps and subsequently to 2 Mbps by January 1st 2015.

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National Telecom Policy 2012

The National Telecom Policy 2012 was set to replace more than 12 years old telecom regulations and was approved by the Union Cabinet on May 31, 2012. Its vision was, “to provide secure, reliable, affordable and high quality converged telecommunication services anytime, anywhere for an accelerated inclusive socio-economic development”.

Lets take a look into key recommendations and its current status of implementation.

• “’Broadband For All” at a minimum download speed of 2 Mbps – Broadband speed increased to 512kbps

• Domestic Manufacturing- Making India a global hub – Now part of Make in India Campaign.

• Liberalisation of Spectrum- any Service in any Technology – Implemented

• Unified Licensing, delinking of Spectrum from License, – Implemented

• One Nation – Full Mobile Number Portability and work towards One Nation – Free Roaming – Pending

• Voice over Internet Protocol, Cloud Computing, Next Generation Network including IPV6  – Pending

•  175 million broadband connections by 2017 and 600 million 2020 – 79.21 million as of October 2014

•  Allow trading, sharing, pooling of spectrum – Pending

Minimum broadband Speed

The policy pointed out broadband speed in India was very low at 256kbps and recommended to revise it to 512 Kbps by the end of 2012 and subsequently to 2 Mbps by 2015, with higher speeds of at least 100 Mbps on demand. After long delays TRAI redefined broadband as data connection providing minimum 512 kbps speed. This resulted in revision of existing unlimited broadband plans by ISP to minimum 512Kbps even for post FUP usage.