Government on Tuesday issued a series of orders simplifying the know your customer (KYC) processes and thereby initiating the telecom reforms announced by the Cabinet on September 15.

Presently, a subscriber has to undergo KYC process which entails visit to the point-of-sale along with the original documents of identity and address as proof for obtaining new mobile connection or conversion of mobile connection from prepaid to postpaid or vice-versa.

Online service delivery has become an acceptable norm in the recent past and most of the customer services are being offered through internet with OTP authentication. Contactless services in the Covid era needs to be promoted for subscriber convenience and also for ease of doing business, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said in a statement.

Customer consent has been made compulsory in case the Aadhaar is being used and demographic details are being obtained electronically from UIDAI, it said.

Accordingly, orders for immediate implementation have been issued by the DoT to implement contactless, customer centric and secured KYC processes including Aadhaar based e-KYC and Self KYC.

Aadhaar based e-KYC process has been re-introduced for issuing of new mobile connections. Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) will be charged ₹1 per customer authentication by the UIDAI, it said.

"This is a complete paperless and digital process wherein the demographic details along with picture of the customer is received online by the TSPs from the UIDAI," it said.

Similarly for self KYC, the issuing of mobile connection to the customers is done through an app/portal-based online process, wherein a customer can apply for mobile connection sitting at home/office and gets the sim card delivered at the door step using documents electronically verified by UIDAI or DigiLocker, it added.

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