The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will undertake demand studies for direct assignment of spectrum to enterprises setting up captive non-public networks (CNPN) and has invited participation for the same.
To this end, the DoT has launched a module on the Saralsanchar portal for carrying out the demand studies. It has informed that enterprises having a net worth of more than Rs 1 billion and willing to set up CNPNs by obtaining spectrum directly from the DoT are invited to participate in the exercise. Eligible and willing enterprises can submit details such as ownership, net worth, proposed locations, requirement of spectrum in various bands etc., on the portal from August 10, 2022, to September 9, 2022.
The government had issued guidelines for CNPN licenses on June 27, 2022, to establish the legal framework for CNPNs. The guidelines provide that the enterprises seeking to establish CNPN may obtain spectrum on lease from telecom service providers or directly from the DoT. These guidelines also provide that the DoT will undertake demand studies for direct assignments of spectrum to enterprises setting up CNPNs.
Industry reactions:
Commenting on the development, T.V. Ramachandran, president, Broadband India Forum, said, “We welcome this announcement by DoT but sincerely wonder why such a demand study is required at all. There are 794 such private networks in the rest of the world and we need to be aligned to that. Pro-rata potential for India could be 150-200 private networks. Moreover, there was no such demand study for the public networks of 4G, 3G or 2G. We need to implement 5G CNPN with the option of direct spectrum to enterprises so that India can move to Industry 4.0 expeditiously.”
