COAI opposes mandatory testing of telecom products

The apex body of telecom service provider, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has opposed for mandatory testing of telecom products and said that this move will "cripple" the debt-ridden sector and increase a cost of telecom services hurting end-consumers.

"The mandatory testing of telecom products proposal should be abolished, as this mandatory local screening will create potential supply chain disruptions, increasing the cost of telecom services and hurting end consumers," COAI Director General Rajan Mathews said.

In a recent past, Associated Chambers of Commerce of India (Assocham) has also opposed the proposal of mandatory testing of telecom equipment which is used in India after certification from well-known third-party global bodies.

The move to get the draft guidelines by the Telecom Engineering Centre for mandatory testing of the end to end equipment would add one more layer of regulation and go against the spirit of 'ease of doing business," Assocham said in a letter to Telecommunication Secretary and Chairperson of the Telecom Commission, Aruna Sundararajan.

It said, in any case, the telecom industry is "already heavily debt-ridden" and any more regulatory compliance burden would create serious issues in the global supply chain cycle.

"Declining revenues, mounting debt, the hyper-competitive market place have posed tremendous pressure on network investments, expansions". Rawat also said that most of the critical telecom infrastructure supplied to operators and other intermediaries in the entire voice and data chain are being manufactured in India itself, in the spirit of the Make in India programme.

Assocham has cautioned that this mandatory testing would not only be counter-productive to the industry which is already heavily debt-ridden and would also create serious issues in the global supply chain cycle.