DoT likely to finalise Unified Licensing regime in a month

The government is likely to finalise in a month the regime for Unified Licensing (UL) that will enable users to get mobile, landline, DTH and cable TV services from a single company without the entity necessarily owning the full infrastructure.

"Unified Licence is likely to come in a month from now," Telecom Secretary M F Farooqui told reporters.

The finalisation of the UL framework has been pushed back a few times already.

Under the UL, operators will be free to provide all telecom services with one licence. However, the licences will not have spectrum bundled with them.

At present, companies need to get different licences for different types of services such as the Internet, mobile and long distance calls.

Operators like Airtel and Reliance separately provide most of the these services, while companies like Idea and Vodafone are to not offer DTH services.

Once the UL framework comes into force, telecom companies holding the licence will be able to provide all services that existing licences permit as well as share spectrum and other active part of telecom infrastructure that was not permitted earlier.

Telecom service providers who want to offer additional services apart from current offerings will have to go in for the unified licence.