True MVNO soon to be a reality in India

More than 2 years back I discussed about MVNO in India – their challenges and how they can be successful in this country despite the telecom space is crowded and tariff is overall lower than other countries. (Read more 'Not Truly' MVNO Failed in Most Cases & Future of Mobile Virtual Players is Bright in India, Provided Regulations at Place )

It’s 2016 now and Indian telecom players are consolidating – Airtel bought Loop, Augere & Aircel’s 4G spectrum and liberalized spectrum from Videocon; RCom is merging with MTS and Aircel. After all the merger and acquisition we will have handful of operators. Pan Indian operators includes Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, Rcom-Aircel-MTS merged company, Reliance Jio and state owned BSNL-MTNL while regional player list includes Tata Tele, Telenor and Videocon.

So there will be less number of operators and as country’s 4G ecosystem including devices are getting more matured it gives immense opportunity to potential MVNO players.


Keeping the hope in the country’s ever-changing telecommunications space we have been heard that nearly 70 companies applied to Department of Telecom (DoT) for MVNO licenses.

Among these, Datawind and Future Group are also there. It should noted that Future Group is running MVNO-like services as Talk24 using Tata Tele’s GSM/3G network.

Update: Among the applicants are Netraj Technology, Ometa Net Private Ltd, Sistemos Information Technology, Adpay Mobile Payment India, Powernet Communications, Tashee Buildcon, AK Edu Technologies, Intech Infratel and Varoaan Services. 

DoT will begin issuing licenses for virtual mobile operators from beginning of October this year. We will be excited to see how MVNO can shake the industry or die in the competition with traditional players!

The story was first published on Telecomtalk.info