Mint Explainer | Trai plans a cut in network spectrum charges—why it matters for telcos

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Last week, India’s telecom regulator proposed cutting the charges operators pay to use a set of airwaves known as microwave spectrum. These airwaves are not used by consumers directly.

Instead, they serve as backhaul—connecting mobile towers to the core network so calls, data, video streaming and messaging work seamlessly. The proposal by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) seeks to rationalise how this backhaul spectrum is priced and assigned, arguing that operators have long been paying disproportionately high charges for what is essentially enabling infrastructure. If accepted by the department of telecommunications (DoT), the changes would lower network rollout costs and offer limited but meaningful financial relief to telecom companies.

Mint breaks down the development. Every video call or movie stream depends on an invisible network backbone. Microwave backhaul spectrum forms a critical part of that backbone, particularly in India, where fibre connectivity remains uneven.

In areas with patchy or unviable optical fibre coverage, microwave backhaul allows operators to rollout out 4G and 5G, expand rural broadband, and support public Wi-Fi networks. The scale of the problem is evident in government data. As of March, only 46.09% of India’s mobile towers were connected to the core network through optical fibre, a process known as tower fibreisation.

As data traffic rises sharply, this gap has made backhaul spectrum indispensable for handling higher network loads. Despite its importance, policy around backhaul spectrum has remained unclear. There was no settled framework on whether it should be auctioned, administratively assigned or delicensed.