IBM, Indian Telecom Regulator to Roll Out Blockchain Registries in 2019
December 13, 2018 by Akshay Makadiya
IBM, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), and domestic Indian telecom providers plan to launch a number of blockchain registries in early 2019. Reportedly, the solutions will focus on streamlining complex multi-party processes such as Mobile Number Portability (MNP) and Do Not Call (DNC) registries.
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Toward Simplifying Mobile Service Systems
American multinational tech giant IBM is teaming up with Indian telecom regulator TRAI and local telecom providers to pilot the deployment of blockchain technology in mobile service systems such as MNP and DNC registries.
For now, names of the specific participating domestic telecom partners have not been disclosed.
Following successful tests, Sriram Raghavan, vice president of IBM Research and CTO of IBM India/South Asia, noted the greenlighting of the blockchain-based solutions will be early next year.
“We have completed proof of concepts and pilots with all the major telecom providers and with TRAI in this space,” Raghavan said.
“We anticipate that, going into the New Year, we’ll start to see blockchain solutions getting rolled out.”
Raghavan also said the new blockchain applications will ease out the mobile number portability process by recording data on a private blockchain network. MNP features allow users to migrate their existing mobile number to a different network carrier without having to change their number.
As such a service requires interaction between two telecom providers, Raghavan emphasized that blockchain could simplify that process.
Additionally, the new incoming blockchain applications will see the migration of India’s current DNC registry onto a private distributed ledger.
The associated data will be recorded on a private ledger where only trusted parties will have access to it. The blockchain-based system will allow TRAI to monitor if do-not-call requests are being honored or not.
“This gives Trai, as a regulator, more visibility and spot malfeasance quickly,” said Raghavan.
India’s Telecommunication Sector Increasingly Looking to Blockchain Projects
However, the partnership with American tech innovator IBM is not TRAI’s first interaction with blockchain technology.
This past May, TRAI ordered all domestic telecom operators to prepare to embrace blockchain technology to tackle spam telemarketers. The following month, TRAI issued related draft guidelines for service providers.
Moreover, tech giant Microsoft also recently teamed up with Indian network solutions provider Tech Mahindra to develop a blockchain-based platform to control unsolicited communications.
The platform is aimed at bringing all participants in the ecosystem, including telecom operators, users, and regulators, onto a single platform.
Can blockchain registries transform the telecom sector for betterment? Share your views in the comments section.
Images via Pixabay
