Vodafone Idea and Airtel flag rise in compliance requirements

Telecom operators Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel expect to face an increase in compliance requirements due to the privacy norms laid down by the newly enacted data privacy law.

"We are likely to become a significant data fiduciary because our core business is only with the mobile number, which is a legal identity of the consumer. There are a lot of things that we have started doing such as assessing what data we require and at what juncture," said Mathan Babu Kasilingam, executive vice president - chief technology security officer, Vodafone Idea.

He was speaking at a panel discussion at the fourth edition of ETTelecom Digital Telco Summit - 2023, organised with the TRAI Centre of Studies and Research.


"For telcos, it is far more significant because our consumer data gets touched by a variety of players, whether it is the SIM card manufacturers, people working in market intelligence or it could be OTT players. The identity is digital everywhere, which is the mobile number," said Kasilingam. "We will look forward to how this law gets enacted on us and the compliance."

Sanjeev Dhallam, vice president - core network and security, Bharti Airtel, said the telcos already have in place strong governance and security practices for the protection of data.