Lightstorm Telecom Connectivity Private Limited earlier this year bagged an Unified License (UL) from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) that was granted in the month of August 2020. The company is lone new UL licensee in the last 2 years since December 2018 when DoT last gave a new UL license to V-Con Mobile and Infra Private Limited.
Lightstorm Telecom got the UL license for National Area on 28th August 2020 with ISP ‘A’, NLD and ILD authorisation. ISP ‘A’ license allows a UL license holder to operate on a pan India basis. The license is more expensive than ISP ‘B’ and ISP ‘C’ license. NLD license allows the company to provide digital capacity to carry long distance telecommunication service such as voice, data, text, video etc. ILD license allows companies to provide international connectivity to networks operated by foreign carriers.
The company has bagged only certain parts of UL license and not all the aspects. Lightstorm in all likelihood is looking to develop a nation wide fiber network to be a national level ISP and then lease their fiber networks to the telecos for revenue.
According to a Livemint article dating back to 2019, Lightstorm was looking to be carrier-neutral telecom infrastructure platform with New York based I Squared Capital investing $300 million into the platform.
