Marking the first 100 days of the NDA government, Communication and IT Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad in a press conference said that the department of telecommunications (DoT) would come out with new guidelines for telecom spectrum trading and sharing by December.
 
"I have told my staff to ensure that guidelines on spectrum sharing and trading are in place by year-end. The guidelines must be fair and objective and the consumer interests must also be kept in mind while framing the new guidelines", said Ravi Shankar Prasad, Communication and IT Minister.
 
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had in July released the much awaited guidelines on sharing of radio frequencies in all bands among telcos, to optimally use limited air waves. Currently, mobile operators are allowed to share network infrastructure like mobile towers, which has helped them reduce costs, but not air waves. Trai has said that spectrum in different bands of spectrum will be sharable provided both the licensees are having spectrum in the same band.
 
Ravi Shankar Prasad also elaborated that the entire mechanism concerning the next round of spectrum auction scheduled to start from February 3, 2015 has to be worked out by the year-end to ensure that auction before is completed during the current financial year.
 
The minister also hinted that more spectrum would be made available for which his ministry is in talks with the defence ministry. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is yet to agree to release 5 MHz of 3G spectrum to DoT. Telecom companies have repeatedly proposed that DoT swap 15 MHz of spectrum in the 1900-MHz band with an equal quantum of radio wave in the 3G band of 2100 MHz, unused with MoD.
 
A cyber security measures under Digital India programme a 'National Cyber Coordination Centre' is also being set up for which `800 crore has been earmarked.
 
The government will also set up an e-governance security centre at a cost of `270 crore for ensuring security of all e-governance initiatives which has witnessed huge transactions. The government plans to complete the National Optical Fibre Network by 2017. This would provide broadband services in all 2.5 lakh panchayats at an estimated cost of `20,000 crore.