The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has agreed to telecommunication companies’ demand for not allowing mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) entering Indian markets.
NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has agreed to telecommunication companies’ demand for not allowing mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) entering Indian markets to own or share radio frequency bandwidth with the network operators like Bharti Airtel.
“The MVNOs will not be allowed to have spectrum of their own,” Trai’s chairman Nripendra Misra said Monday after an open house discussion on the matter.
MVNOs are entities that buy airtime in bulk from the telecommunication network operators, and sell their own branded services to consumers.
They typically do not have their own infrastructure like towers and radio frequency.
Earlier last month, Trai had said in a consultation paper that the MVNOs do not have assignment to spectrum but can provide telecom services by sharing the spectrum of the access provider.
Following this, the telecom network operators and equipment vendors had asked Trai to modify the definition of MVNO to rule out any ownership or sharing of spectrum.
“It is respectfully submitted that MVNOs do not “share” spectrum with access providers network operators. “Sharing spectrum” conveys a sense of ownership co-ownership, which is not true in the case of an MVNO,” the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the body of GSM operators, had said earlier this month in response to Trai’s consultation paper.
COAI had quoted the definitions adopted by various international authorities that state that MVNOs do not own spectrum.
“The suggested definition will bring in an element of spectrum trading,” the Association of Unified Access Service Providers of India (Auspi), which is the body of the CDMA operators, had said in its comments.
“MVNO with spectrum will not be a ‘virtual network operator’ but will become a ‘facility based’ mobile network operator. The facility-based MVNO is indistinguishable from unified access service provider and as such cannot be covered under a separate regulatory framework or licensing regime,” AUSPI added.
Misra also said there has to be a lock-in period for MVNOs entering into the Indian telecommunications market, and an MVNO’s security deposit would be forfeited in case it exits the business during this period.
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