Consultation process underway on differential licensing in telecom sector: Dhotre

The government is carrying out a consultation process on differential licensing through which different layers related to telecom services will be dealt separately, Parliament was informed on Wednesday.

As per the current licensing regime, infrastructure, network, and service layers are not segregated and are part of the Unified Licence.

However, the infrastructure layer is unbundled in the form of Infrastructure Provider Category-I (IP-I), though with a limited scope.

“The government is in the process of consultation on the matter of enabling unbundling of different layers (e.g., infrastructure, network, services, and application layer) through differential licensing,” Minister of State for IT and Communications Sanjay Dhotre informed the Lok Sabha.

Telecom operators have opposed the proposal in their submission to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).

According to them, the proposal goes against regulatory consistency and would wreak unknown and unpredictable impact on investments made, leading to investor uncertainty. PTI