According to news sources, digital wallet firm – Oxigen is reportedly in talks with state-run BSNL and other telecom operators to strike a deal and start offering new telecom services as a Virtual Network Operator (VNO). All of this is aimed at being completed by the end of this year. A VNO basically leases bandwidth from various telecom operators that are already available to provide voice and data services to its customers. Oxigen has approached BSNL and is in discussion with some other telecom operators as well for setting up its VNO operations in India. The Telecom Department of India had on Friday released license guidelines for VNOs, which opened doors for new class of players that can act like retailers for all telecom service providers.
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The entry of VNOs in India is expected to bring down the cost of providing telecom services for companies and even allow them for cutting down tariffs. VNOs are often treated as extension of Network Service Operators or Telecom Service Providers and they would not be allowed to install equipments interconnecting with the network of other telecom operators. Pramod Saxena, Oxigen Chairman and Managing Director said, we have large distribution network and already buying air-time with various telecom operators. The guidelines (for VNO) have just come. We will go through it and hopefully we will have our VNO operations in place definitely before the end of this year.
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Saxena added that we are in talks with foreign players who have expertise in VNO business and can help us in setting up network. Our focus will be providing data services starting from North East and Central part of the country and then gradually be a pan-India operator. We have 2 lakh access point in India besides online reach. We will provide value added service, bundle financial products, e-commerce as part of our service. Oxigen will be able to leverage it digital wallet as VNO.
With inputs from ET Telecom
