The Hindu Business Line : TRAI favours active infrastructure sharing

In a significant move, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has taken the first step towards forming a policy that allows mobile operators to resell airtime to Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO).

MVNOs are companies who do not own any cellular infrastructure but buy airtime from operators and then market and sell it using their own brand.

Companies like Virgin have made it big in this segment in markets such as USA and are now looking to enter the Indian space.

In a consultation paper on sharing infrastructure, TRAI has said that the operators may want to look at the possibility of moving beyond passive infrastructure sharing and share active infrastructure to reduce roll-out costs. TRAI pointed out that the currently infrastructure sharing is taking place mostly on a voluntary basis worked between the operators.

"Infrastructure sharing has not picked up the desired momentum and there is no planned approach to achieve the task," TRAI said.

The Department of Telecom had earlier sought the regulator's views on making infrastructure-sharing mandatory as part of the operator's licence.

More than 50 per cent of the country is yet to be offered mobile services and sharing infrastructure will reduce the cost of rolling out services.

Apart from MVNOs, TRAI has also sought industry views on sharing radio.

While TRAI has acknowledged that sharing radio may have adverse effect on quality of services due to reduction of the signal strength, it has said that sharing can be in the form of intra-circle roaming. "Service providers can have agreement to provide mobile services to their subscribers wherever their own network signal is not available or weak. This may be very useful to increase the coverage area and quality of service," it said.

The regulator has also discussed other forms of sharing in the paper including common back-haul sharing in rural environment where traffic is very low.

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