DoT working on policy to treat broadband as basic need

The Department of Telecom is expected to finalise a National Broadband Policy within 100 days that would treat high-speed Internet access a basic right like education and health.

"A new broadband policy is being prepared and will be finalised within 100 days," an official source said.

Under the new policy the government has plans to include broadband among basic necessities like education and health and work towards new legislation of 'Right to Broadband', sources said.

They said it is expected to look at ways of increasing broadband penetration as well as convergence of various technologies and platforms like cable TV, optical fibre, wireless connection through spectrum, VSAT and satellite .

At present there are different departments that govern various technologies. For instance, Cable TV comes under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and Satellite related issues are majorly governed by the Department of Space.

The policy is proposed to look at provisions for providing affordable broadband equipments and devices for end consumer use.

The National Telecom Policy 2012 has set a target of 175 million broadband connections by 2017, and 600 million 2020 at minimum 2 Mbps download speed and making available higher speeds of at least 100 Mbps on demand.

There were about 61 million broadband subscribers at the end of March, 2014. Of these, 14.86 million subscribed broadband through fixed line and 46 million used wireless connection like dongles, mobile phone and other devices.