Aadhaar authentication can help Indian telecom operators save over Rs 1000 crore per year
July 2, 2012 at 1:56 pm | Posted in Additional business, The Market | Comments Off on Aadhaar authentication can help Indian telecom operators save over Rs 1000 crore per yearhttp://telecomlead.com/inner-page-details.php?id=8257&block=Service%20Provider
Spending on mobile subscriber verification has been a major issue in India. On average, telecom operators add 10 to 12 million subscribers every month. In 2010, telecom operators said verification norms increased the cost for operators to register new subscribers.
Adopting Aadhaar authentication can result in substantial savings of over Rs 1,000 crore annually for the telecom industry, according to a study called Leveraging Aadhaar in Telecom Sector by UIDAI. UIDAI is a body which is implementing Aadhhar project under which every resident of the country would be given a unique number.
The authority has been entrusted the task of enrolling 60 million residents. It has enrolled 20 million residents. Aadhaar authentication is an online real-time service and only responds with a yes or no.
According to UIDAI’s study, the discussions with industry experts indicate that paperless Know Your Customer (KYC) using Aadhaar can save substantially per subscriber by avoiding TERM fines and paper-based backend processes.
The TERM fines are imposed on operators who fail to verify subscribers identity and address as per prescriber norms.
According to the annual report of Department of Telecom for 2010-2011, the Telecom Enforcement Resource and Monitoring cell imposed a penalty of Rs 700 crore on telecom operators related to subscriber verification.
The estimate indicates that the telecom operators are issuing over 30 million mobile phone connections every month.
UIADAI gets to enrol another 40 crore people in 16 States
The UIDAI has been given permission and finances to the tune of an additional 5,791 crore to enrol another 40 crore people in 16 States under its Aadhaar scheme. The NPR will accept the biometric data collected by the UIDAI in those States and continue to collect its own data through the Registrar-General of India in the remaining States.
The UIDAI had been mandated to enrol 20 crore people by March 2012. While the UIDAI is a voluntary scheme, the NPR is mandatory for all residents. What this means is that if a resident has enrolled himself with the UIDAI and has had his fingerprints and iris scanned, he can merely give his Aadhaar number to the NPR registrars rather than submitting himself to biometric data collection twice.
Recently, te UIDAI has claimed the data cannot be accessed even by the operator, enrolling agency or the multiple registrars engaged in the exercise.
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