The Department of Telecommunications, through its letter dated 21.08.2017, requested TRAI to suggest its policy inputs for formulation of National Telecom Policy – 2018 (NTP-2018). Upon receiving the Government’s request, TRAI prepared an initial draft consisting of a range of issues proposed to be addressed in NTP-2018 and shared the same with stakeholders for preliminary discussions. Based on preliminary discussions with various stakeholders including telecom service providers, telecom equipment manufacturers, industry associations, consulting firms, cloud service providers etc.; the Authority prepared draft inputs for formulating the NTP-2018 and issued a Consultation Paper on 3rd January 2018 to seek views of stakeholders. All the comments received from stakeholders have been posted on TRAI’s website.

The Authority, after carefully examining various issues emanating from the written submissions of the stakeholders, discussions during Open House Discussions and inputs received from eminent personalities, has finalized its inputs for formulation the National Telecom Policy-2018.

The digital communication has presented India an opportunity to overcome the impediments posed by deficiencies in its brick and mortar based physical infrastructure and opened doors to new paradigms in all sectors of economy whereby the common man at the bottom of the pyramid is being served much more efficiently and at a fraction of cost as compared to earlier days. For these reasons, this policy affects the outcomes of several sectors and should be looked in at from a much wider perspective. Accordingly, the Authority has suggested that National Telecom Policy-2018 should be titled as "the Information and Communication Technologies Technology Policy - 2018".

The Authority has recommended the Vision, Mission and Objectives for NTP – 2018 and for, each objective, the number of strategies have been recommended, the details of which are available here.