The New Telecom Policy that would be brought out by the government by the end of the year 2005 will help users in a single unified telecom circle across the country.

This will enable anyone to pick up a phone and dial anywhere local or STD. The service that will have a single unified tariff is expected to bring in slimmer phone bills and a quantum jump in the number of calls criss-crossing the country.

To help facilitate the entry of a single telecom circle from the current 25 circles, the new policy will focus on removing artificial barriers that have been hindering the growth rate of the sector.

The new policy will also address whether net telephony would be allowed within India.

The thrust of the government now is towards making the country into single unified telecom circle. A step towards this was taken recently when the department of telecommunications did away with the need for prefixing the STD code between eight circles-Chennai and Tamil Nadu, Mumbai and Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh East and Uttar Pradesh West and Kolkata and West Bengal.

There are four players in the NLD segment viz. VSNL, Reliance, Bharti and the public sector BSNL. The first three have entered the field paying licence fees.

Telecom Policy was last revised in 1999 which set some specific targets that would 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.