Telecom gear makers such as Nokia, Cisco and others have sought relaxation in government policy to enable them to import from their factories in China as the country gears up for the 5G radio wave auction.

Sources said the telecom gear makers have written to the department of telecommunication to relax the China sourcing norms.

While officials said the matter would be examined and a call taken, they added that even if they are allowed to source, these equipment would have to be cleared as a “trusted” source by the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS).

If a firm fails to get the ‘trusted’ approval for certain products, it cannot be deployed in a network.

The mandate is part of the National Security Directive on the telecommunication sector, which came into effect on June 15 last year. So far, around 20 Indian and global firms have been approved as trusted, barring Chinese majors such as Huawei and ZTE.

To address the perennial problem of increase in cyberattacks, intelligence gathering, which comes laced with the growth in data consumption, the government announced the directives which mandated the Indian TSPs to connect their networks only on those new devices designated as ‘Trusted Products’ from ‘Trusted Sources’. Trusted products have critical components sourced from reliable sources.

The gear makers have informed the DoT that it would take 6-9 months to relocate their China bases to India and after that they will be compliant with all the regulations. If given such a relaxation, the vendors have said they would provide the security agencies with all granular details about their products to prove there is no malware in their equipment manufactured in China.

According to the gear makers, a pan-India deployment of 5G services will require at least 2-2.5 lakh towers to be powered with 5G equipment.

Motilal Oswal had projected that the telcos would need to invest Rs 1.3-2.3 lakh crore to launch a pan-India 5G network.

The Cabinet expected to meet next week to clear 5G spectrum prices, the department of telecommunication (DoT) plans to start the auction process in June and complete it by July.

The telecom regulator TRAI has recommended a mega auction plan of over Rs 7.5 lakh crore for over 1 lakh megahertz spectrum in case the government allocates it for a period of 30 years. In case of 20 years, the total value of the proposed spectrum auction will stand at around Rs 5.07 lakh crore at the reserve price, according to the back-of-the-envelope calculation.

With large swathes of spectrum remaining unsold in the last two auctions, Trai recommended to the government for selling airwaves in all existing bands of 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz, 2500 MHz and new slots of 600 MHz, 3300-3670 MHz and 24.25-28.5 GHz. It has suggested about 39 per cent lower reserve price for all bands, compared to the prices proposed in the previous recommendations in 2018.