Trai Maps Out New Plans for Telecom Infrastructure Providers to Reduce Financial Pressure on Telcos

As per the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), by increasing the scope of infrastructure providers, which is aimed at infrastructure from services it would be able to reduce capital and operational expenses of the telecom operators. As per the sector regulator, this would also help the stress telecom operators and would increase the ease of doing business. As per an ET Telecom report, Trai chairman, RS Sharma remarked, “Services and infrastructure will be unbundled, and it would ultimately become infrastructure as a service (IaaS) for telecom carriers, and they can easily share networks and reduce capital (capex) and operational expenditure (opex).”

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Telcos Could Be Able to Save 40% on Capital Expenses

As per the estimates charted out by the industry, if the regulator’s move goes through, then there could be around 40% savings on capital expense by telecom service providers. In August, the telecom regulator also put together a consultation paper which was aimed at reviewing the scope of infrastructure providers, or IP-I entities. These entities are aimed at providing towers on rent or sale to licensed telcos, in addition to other assets like dark fibre and duct space. Right now, these companies are not allowed to own or actively share these assets, but can only deploy these services on behalf of the telecom operators. But, now the sector regulator is exploring whether or not these companies would be able to offer active infrastructures such as feeder cable, common antenna, radio access network (RAN), and transmission systems.