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Informist, Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025

 

By Shakshi Jain

 

NEW DELHI – The government is urging private telecom players to increasingly source equipment and components from local manufacturers amid rising global trade tensions and higher tariffs. However, there is a "long way to go" before home-grown brands can match international standards, Lt. Gen. Dr. S.P. Kochhar, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India, told Informist on the sidelines of India Mobile Congress 2025. While Kochhar sees US President Donald Trump's tariff policy as a catalyst for "Make in India", he says business entities cannot become the "testbed" for these evolving products.

 

Earlier in the day, Union Minister of Communications Jyotiraditya Scindia said the production-linked incentive scheme for telecom equipment manufacturing has led to INR 910 billion in production, including nearly INR 180 billion in exports.

 

Kochhar urged the government to ease the burden of telecom service providers struggling to recoup the significant costs of deploying fifth generation networks. He called the decision of telecom companies to hike tariffs a "business imperative." According to a report by JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd., Jio Platforms Ltd.'s planned initial public offering in the first half of 2026 has increased the possibility of a nearly 15% tariff hike in the Indian telecom business by December. The two Indian telecom giants – Bharti Airtel Ltd. and Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. – reportedly scrapped their entry-level 1 gigabyte per day plan earlier this year.

 

When asked to list a promising industrial use case of 5G, Kochhar said the ecosystem requires a middle player akin to an aggregator and distributor of services that can identify needs of small businesses in the country and facilitate supply of the same from telecom service providers. While Kochhar is hopeful about efficient development of 6G technology due to the integration of artificial intelligence, he is not confident about the 2030 timeline for its commercial availability.

 

Kochhar also sees satellite-based service providers as collaborators in the sectoral growth, rather than competitors to telecom service providers. He believes satellite communication in India will prosper on the back of terrestrial network. Rural networking is inefficient for telecom service providers in India due to the high costs of deploying and maintaining infrastructure in areas with low population density and difficult terrain.

 

Satellite broadband services in India will begin after companies finalise their rollout plan and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India finalises spectrum prices, Scindia said. The government has so far granted permits to Bharti Airtel-backed Eutelsat OneWeb and Reliance Jio-SES, and issued a Letter of Intent to billionaire Elon Musk-owned Starlink.

 

On Bharti Airtel's proposal to convert its adjusted gross revenue dues into equity, like peer Vodafone Idea Ltd., Kochhar said he sees it as a "fair" ask.  End

 

Edited by Ashish Shirke

 

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