The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has urged the government to ensure that new captive private networks, which the Union Cabinet recently approved, are made to conform to the same license fee and GST payment requirements as the existing telecom providers as well as necessary technical and regulatory safeguards to ensure that such networks remain “truly private and isolated”.
Expressing disappointment with the government’s decision and seeking a level playing field, COAI, which counts the three private telcos Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea as its members, has written to the Telecom Secretary K. Rajaraman questioning the justification for allocating spectrum to ‘industry verticals’ for operating private captive networks.
“Nevertheless, since the Government has taken initial decision to enable the CNPN (captive non-public networks) through direct spectrum assignment from DoT… we propose the following steps to provide clarity and reduce” risks, the industry group said in its letter dated June 18.
COAI has argued that there is a need to clearly define the scope of CNPN, which it stressed should be restricted to machine-to-machine communication inside the CNPN’s premises only. The CNPN must also ensure that they do not cause any interference with public networks.
Citing national security, the industry group said that these networks should be made to comply with the prescribed subscriber verification norms to ensure adequate verification and traceability of every user. It further added that these networks would need to be even more secure than ordinary handsets as any security breach in a network, which is controlling machine/production, would be catastrophic for the economy of the country. “Therefore, each and every network element for a CNPN should comply with the requirements of trusted product/trusted source and any equipment should be installed only after obtaining the ..
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