New policy in the offing

The government was in the process of formulating the New Telecom Policy (NTP) 2011, which will override the existing policy announced 11 years ago. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) plans to set up a committee to initialise the process and will finalise the terms of reference for the committee. DoT will also finalise its internal view on the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai's) recommendations, which was submitted in May last year, on mergers and acquisitions, spectrum allocation, spectrum sharing and licensing aspects. The recommendations met with str­­o­ng opp­­­os­ition from the industry.