To incorporate best practices in the National Telecom Policy 2011, the Telecom Ministry plans to study telecom licensing and regulatory policies of 20 developed and developing countries.

According to official sources in the Department of Telecom (DoT), it is planning to hire a senior telecom consultant to undertake this study and assist its group for formulation of NTP 2011 on licensing and convergence issues.

The consultant hired for the job will analyse and inform DoT advantages and disadvantages of the policy adopted by various countries and skim out the best practice out of them.

The DoT group formed for NTP'11 will also look at merits and demerits converged services being provided in these countries and scope of new services that can be incorporated in the Indian telecom network.

The analysis and suggestion of the consultant will be apart from inputs being taken by Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal during round-table discussion with industry.

At present, countries like Israel provide location based services which give real-time information on location of a mobile user but India is yet to open this space because of various reasons mainly related to security and privacy of an user.

DoT is also in mood of providing preferential treatment for indigenously manufactured goods. However, this move had been opposed by telecom service providers.

Also there is major issue on pricing and allocation of spectrum among telecom companies.

The study will help DoT in resolving the issues where the department has not been able to sort out differences among players.