The Department of Telecommunications has amended telecom licences in an attempt to enable service providers to roll out machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. M2M service is believed to be a key driver of 5G adoption in India.
Earlier, in May 2018, the DoT had issued M2M guidelines related to their provisioning, excluding it from the telecom licences. According to a latest circular, the DoT, in the licence amendment, has incorporated M2M with pan-India permit, limited to circle level and district level. Meanwhile, telecom operators interested in providing M2M services across India will have to pay an entry fee of Rs 3 million, performance bank guarantee (PBG) of Rs 4 million and financial bank guarantee (FBG) of Rs 200,000.
In addition, the entry fee for the circle level category has been fixed at Rs 200,000, PBG Rs 200,000 and FBG at Rs 20,000. The entry fee, PBG and FBG for district level will be Rs 20,000, Rs 10,000 and Rs 2,000, respectively. Further, the DoT has also added a clause for provisioning of audiotex or interactive voice response service (IVRS) as part of telecom licence. The amendment has been made across all categories of telecom service licences.
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