TelecomLive April-2020

Bypassing licensing regime, unfairly www.telecomlive.com 17 Telecom LIVE April 2020 provide leased circuit connectivity to end customers also. IP-I IP-I registrants are those Infrastructure Providers who provide assets such as Dark Fibre, Right of Way, Duct space and Tower for the purpose to grant on lease/rent/sale basis to the licensees of Telecom Services licensed under Section 4 of Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 on mutually agreed terms and conditions. In no case the company shall work and operate or provide telegraph service including end-to-end bandwidth either to any service provider or any other customer. The Indian companies registered under the Companies Act are eligible to apply. There is no restriction on foreign equity and number of entrants. There is no entry fee and no bank guarantee. The applicant company is required to pay Rs 5,000 as processing fee along with the application. No license is issued for IP-I. As many as 926 telecom tower companies are registered under IP-I with DoT. Some of the TSPs have also hived off their tower assets into separate entities after the new entity obtained IP-I registration. On March 9, 2009 DoT clarified that the scope of IP-I registration, which was till then limited to passive infrastructure, has been enhanced to cover the active infrastructure, if this active infrastructure is provided on behalf of the licensees, ie they can create active infrastructure limited to antenna, feeder cable, Node B, Radio Access Network (RAN) and transmission system for and on behalf of UASL/CMSP licensees. On November 28, 2016 DoT further clarified that “IP-I provid- ers are not permitted to own and share active infrastructure. The IP-1 providers can only install the active elements (limited to antenna, feeder cable, Node B, Radio Access Network (RAN) and transmission media only) on behalf of Telecom licensees ie these elements should be owned by the companies who have been issued license under Section 4 of Telegraph Act, 1885.” DoT also said that, “Keeping in view, that some IP-I companies have invested into creation of active network infrastructure, which requires a license under Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, all IP- I providers are hereby provided an opportunity to take either a Unified License or a Virtual Network Operator (VNO) license of requisite authorization or a UL (VNO) Cat-B license for specific geographical area within six months of issue of this letter and move all such operations involving active network elements under the license. Alternatively, within a period of six months, the IP-I providers can transfer all such active network elements to a holder of valid license." Thus, presently, IP-I are not allowed to possess any wireless equipment, which requires a license under the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1933. IP-I vs TSPs On April 11, 2007, Trai issued recommendations to DoT on “Infrastructure Sharing” in which it had recommended that the active infrastructure sharing limited to antenna, feeder cable, Node B, Radio Access network (RAN) and transmission system should be allowed among licensed telecom service providers. Sharing of the allocated spectrum may not be permitted. Based on these recommendations, the DoT issued guidelines for active infrastructure sharing in 2008 and permitted sharing of active infrastructure amongst service providers based on the mutual agreements entered amongst them. The licence amendments to allow active sharing were made on February 11, 2016. Thus, presently, while the passive infrastructure such as Dark fibres, Right of Way, Duct space, and towers can be created tions, it has to rework (lower) the reserve price that it has set for 5G spectrum auction by about 75 per cent. The government aims to put a bunch of spectrum bands in the next auctions, the reserve price of which is over Rs 5 lakh crore. The govern- ment opened up telecom infra- structure sector to private companies with effect from August 13, 2000. At that time, two categories of registrations were allowed – IP-I and IP-II. Prior to this, the telecom infra- structure was to be owned, established, and maintained by the licensed telecom service providers only. IP-II An IP-II licensee could lease / rent out /sell end-to-end band- width ie digital transmission capacity capable of carrying a message to the other Licensees of Telecom Services. The IP-II licensee was required to establish necessary digital network for the purpose. However, they were not allowed to directly access or connect the subscribers through last mile linkages; except for Other Service Providers registered with DoT. They were required to pay license fee as well. However, issuance of IP-II Licence was discontinued from December 14, 2005. But, the DoT gave them the option to migrate to NLD (Na- tional Long Distance) licence which allows the NLD licensees to