The new licensing regime covering the two hierarchical categories has been envisaged with a view to promoting innovative services without encouraging uneconomical niche operators, the draft New Telecom Policy says.
All public networks, including switched networks irrespective of media and technology capable of offering voice and/or non-voice (data services) including Internet telephony, shall be covered under the unified licence.
All services, including satellite services that do not have two-way connectivity with the public network, would be covered under licensing through authorisation. This category will also cover the service for provision of passive infrastructure and bandwidth services to service providers, radio paging, PMRTS, voice mail, video conferencing among others, it said.
As part of the introduction of a holistic licensing regime, the first step was taken in October 2003 unifying the fixed and mobile services under a single unified access license.
Logically, the next step is to include the long distance services under the ambit of a unified license.