5G phone availability may see a sharp decline if the government goes forward with a new ruling that makes local testing and certifications of devices mandatory, Airtel, Jio, and Vi have warned. The telecom providers also suggested that the move will impact data consumption and restrict market access.

Department of Telecommunications (DoT) recently decided to bring 5G phones under phase-5 of the ‘Mandatory Testing & Certification of Telecom Equipment (MTCTE)’ control scheduled from January 1st, 2023 (via Economic Times). Moving forward with this would also hamper India’s ambitions of becoming a global manufacturing base, stated the operators.

Samsung Galaxy A53 5G

“We urge your intervention to instruct TEC to rescind the existing notifications covering all existing consumer electronic products under the MTCTE Certification regime and to desist in pursuing smartwatches, wearables, and smart cameras under Phase III and 5G mobile phones under the proposed Phase V of MTCTE,” the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said in a letter to telecom secretary K. Rajaraman, according to the report.

The COAI represents operators like Jio, Airtel, and Vi along with global companies like Apple, Google, Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, and others. These have collectively urged DoT and TEC to not interfere in mobile manufacturing and leave it under the regulatory framework of the Bureau of Industrial Standards (BIS) and the Ministry of IT & Electronics (MeitY).

Industry executives added that MTCTE is quite a time-consuming procedure and would burden OEMs with compliance costs, restricting market access and delaying device launches.

As one senior executive put it: “TEC’s latest decision is causing unease and uncertainty in the industry as any potential disruption in the availability of 5G smartphones would automatically slow down the pace of adoption of 5G services in India, and also reduce overall data consumption levels, which would ultimately hit telco ARPUs.”

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