Direct spectrum allocation to enterprises not tenable in India: COAI

12 Aug 2025 Evaluate

Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has said that direct spectrum allocation to enterprises is not tenable in India because of various reasons pertaining to India's telecom ecosystem, the national revenue, as well as security architecture. COAI advocated that all enterprise 5G needs must be fulfilled through licensed Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) through spectrum leasing or network slicing, as this would ensure national security, revenue protection and regulatory balance in a rapidly evolving ecosystem.

Noting that some industry bodies have ‘in their own interests’ drawn parallels with countries such as the US, Finland, Germany and the UK, where private networks have been deployed, COAI emphasised that such a comparison ignores a crucial contextual difference of such industries being located in remote or geographically secluded areas with limited public network coverage. It said, in reality, deploying a private 5G network entails significant capital expenditure on equipment, spectrum management, security, network maintenance and skilled personnel. Unlike TSPs, most enterprises do not have the expertise or scale to manage telecom infrastructure efficiently. What appears cheaper on paper could turn out to be more expensive and operationally burdensome in practice. Moreover, with continuous upgrades and evolution of both the technology as well as the ecosystem, there would be a need for continuous upgradation to the network components in the private network, which the telecom operators would be in the most favourable position to know and deploy suitably.

The association is also misleading to claim that telcos would not be technically equipped to provide for the private networks, as with the provisions of 5G, knowledge of the requisite SLAs and the provision of Network Slicing put together, the telcos are in a better position to provide the services along with the knowledge and experience required to run the same on a long-term basis. It further said that radio frequencies cannot be geographically or physically contained and hence, signals from private networks can spill over beyond the intended premises, leading to interference with public mobile networks operated by licensed TSPs, creating risks in network reliability, service quality and user experience on both sides. This could be well managed by a telecom operator.


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