The Centre has set the financial terms for telecom players to obtain licences for machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, key to the adoption of 5G technology in the country.

The guidelines for M2M communications were laid out in May 2018, but the government did not spell out the terms to get the permit.

The department of Telecom (DoT) has now amended the telecom licences to enable the service providers to roll out the service.

Telecom operators interested in providing M2M services across India will have an entry fee of Rs 30 lakh, performance bank guarantee (PBG) of Rs 40 lakh and financial bank guarantee (FBG) of Rs 2 lakh. The entry fee for the circle-level category has been fixed at Rs 2 lakh, PBG Rs 2 lakh and FBG at Rs 20,000.

The entry fee, PBG and FBG for district level will be Rs 20,000, Rs 10,000 and Rs 2,000, respectively. The DoT has also added a clause for the provisioning of audiotext or interactive voice response service (IVRS) as part of the telecom licence.

Meanwhile, Reliance Jio added 2.01 million wireless customers in November, taking its gross mobile user base to 428.61 million.

Bharti Airtel added 1.31 million to take its user base to 355.29 million. Vodafone Idea lost over 1.89 million customers, according to Trai data.

5G push

⚫ M2M is machine to machine communications

⚫ Technical guidelines released in May 2018

⚫ Centre has now set terms for licence fees and performance guarantees