NEW DELHI: The Department of Telecom is likely to come out with a policy structure on machine-to- machine technology by the end of this fiscal.

"We are working on the policy side of M2M technology for the past eight months and it is likely to come out within this financial year," a source in DoT said.

The source added that the Telecommunication Engineering Centre ,an unit of DoT, is working on framing the standards for M2M communications, or Internet of things, but its not certain by when the final standards will be out.

The source added that sectoral regulator Trai's recommendations may not be required for framing the policy.

The initiative is part of 'Digital India' programme wherein the DoT is responsible for infrastructure development and e-goverance.

Expressing the government's resolve to move towards the goal of 'Digital India', Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his speech on August 15 had underlined the need for using information technology to improve governance and spread education and medical facilities.

According to the Ericsson Mobility Report for 2014, globally the number of active cellular M2M devices will increase 3-4 times by 2019, from 200 million at the end of 2013.

"We see cellular M2M taking off. Over time, cellular M2M services and applications related to, for example, intelligent transport systems, will require very short latency in order to be efficient. By 2019, we estimate that more than 20 per cent of the active cellular M2M devices will be connected to LTE subscriptions," Ericsson said.

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