March 30, 1999
New Delhi

2.0 Objectives and targets of the New Telecom Policy 1999

• Access to telecommunications is of utmost importance for achievement of the country's social and economic goals. Availability of affordable and effective communications for the citizens is at the core of the vision and goal of the telecom policy.
• Strive to provide a balance between the provision of universal service to all uncovered areas, including the rural areas, and the provision of high-level services capable of meeting the needs of the country’s economy;
• Encourage development of telecommunication facilities in remote, hilly and tribal areas of the country;
• Create a modern and efficient telecommunications infrastructure taking into account the convergence of IT, media, telecom and consumer electronics and thereby propel India into becoming an IT superpower;
• Convert PCO’s, wherever justified, into Public Teleinfo centres having multimedia capability like ISDN services, remote database access, government and community information systems etc.
• Transform in a time bound manner, the telecommunications sector to a greater competitive environment in both urban and rural areas providing equal opportunities and level playing field for all players;
• Strengthen research and development efforts in the country and provide an impetus to build world-class manufacturing capabilities and
• Achieve efficiency and transparency in spectrum management.
• Enable Indian Telecom Companies to become truly global players.
  

In line with the above objectives, the specific targets that the NTP 1999 seeks to achieve would be:

• Make available telephone on demand by the year 2002 and sustain it thereafter so as to achieve a teledensity of 7 by the year 2005 and 15 by the year 2010
• Encourage development of telecom in rural areas making it more affordable by suitable tariff structure and making rural communication mandatory for all fixed service providers
• Increase rural teledensity from the current level of 0.4 to 4 by the year 2010 and provide reliable transmission media in all rural areas
• Achieve telecom coverage of all villages in the country and provide reliable media to all exchanges by the year 2002
• Provide Internet access to all district head quarters by the year 2000
• Provide high speed data and multimedia capability using technologies including ISDN to all towns with a population greater than 2 lac by the year 2002