iWorld
Telecom stakeholders’ views sort over MWA and MWB spectrum allocation and pricing
NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on 28 March asked stakeholders in the telecom sector to give their views on whether excess spectrum should be withdrawn from existing telecom service providers and whether what should be the criteria for determining this excess usage.
Following a reference from the Department of Telecom (DoT), the regulator issued a consultation paper on the issue of Microwave Access and Backbone (MWA/MWB), and has sought the views by 21 April with counter-comments by 28 April.
TRAI has sought to know the number of Microwave Access and Backbone (MWA/MWB) carriers that should be assigned to a TSP deploying 2G technology only, 3G technology only, BWA technology only, both 2G and 3G technologies, 2G and BWA technologies and 2G, 3G and BWA technologies.
The charging of MWA and MWB carriers is regulated by the AGR based annual spectrum usage charges notified in the DoT’s orders of 3 November 2006, its amendments dated 10 November 2008 and 19 February 2009. However, these orders were set aside by a judgment of the Telecom Disputes Settlement Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) of 22 April 2012 and are now sub-judice in view of an appeal by the government before the Supreme Court. As an interim arrangement, the DoT has issued guidelines in respect of allotment of MWA carriers for BWA services through its order of 16 March 2012. TRAI had been asked to give its recommendations on certain issues in a letter sent by the DoT on 26 November 2012.
According to TRAI, Microwave transmission refers to the technology of transmitting information using radio waves. Microwave technology is widely deployed in mobile communications to provide point-to-point (PTP) Radio Frequency (R.F.) links in mobile backhaul as well as in the backbone network. Mobile backhaul is that portion of the network infrastructure that provides interconnectivity between the access and core networks. The backbone network is used to interconnect different nodes situated at different geographical locations.
For PTP links, microwave frequencies are generally assigned in blocks of 2×28 MHz, known as microwave carriers. There are two types of microwave carriers viz. Microwave Access (MWA) Carriers and Microwave Backbone (MWB) Carriers.
TRAI wants to know from stakeholders the number of MWA/MWB carriers that should be assigned to TSPs in case of 2G, 3G and BWA at the start of their services [at beginning of rolling of services].
Some of the other questions to which views have been sought are:
1. What should be the preferred basis of assignment of MWA/MWB carriers to the TSPs i.e. ‘exclusive basis assignment’ or ‘link-to-link based assignment’?
2. In case ‘exclusive basis’ assignment is preferred, whether MWA and MWB carriers should be assigned administratively or through auction.
3. In case ‘link-to-link basis’ assignment is preferred, how the carrier assignment for different links should be carried out, particularly in nearby locations?
4. Considering the fact that different TSPs may require additional carriers at different point of time, what should be the assignment criteria for allocation of additional carriers for MWA and MWB?
5. How can it be ensured that spectrum carriers assigned are used optimally and the TSPs are encouraged to move towards the OFC?
6. Should an upfront charge be levied on the assignment of MWA or MWB carriers, apart from the annual spectrum charges?
7. What should be the pricing mechanism for MWA and MWB carriers? Should the annual spectrum charges be levied as a percentage of AGR or on link-by-link basis or a combination of the two?
8. In case of percentage AGR based pricing, is there any need to change the existing slabs prescribed by the DoT in 2006 and 2008?
9. In case link-by-link based charging mechanism is adopted then:
(a) Should the spectrum be priced differently for different MW spectrum bands (6GHz/7GHz/13GHz/15GHz/18GHz/21 GHz/26GHz/28GHz/32GHz/42 GHz etc) and the formula for such charges
(b) What are the factors that should appear in the formula?
10. Should the option of assignment of MWA carriers in all the spectrum bands in 6-42 GHz range be explored in line with other countries? What are the likely issues in its assignment MWA carriers in these additional spectrum bands?
11. In your opinion, what is the appropriate time for considering assignment of MWA carriers in higher frequency bands viz. E-band and V-band?
12. Should E-band be fully regulated or there should be light touch regulations?
13. What charging/pricing mechanism would be appropriate for these bands?
eNews
How short, addictive story videos quietly colonised the Indian smartphone
A landmark Meta-Ormax study of 2,000 viewers reveals a format that is growing fast, paying slowly and consumed almost entirely in secret
CALIFORNIA, MUMBAI: India has a new entertainment habit, and it arrived without anyone really noticing. Micro dramas, those short, cliffhanger-driven episodic stories built for the smartphone screen, have quietly embedded themselves into the daily routines of millions of Indians, discovered not by design but by algorithmic accident, watched not in living rooms but in bedrooms, on commutes and in the five minutes before sleep.
That, in essence, is the finding of a sweeping new audience study released by Meta and media insights firm Ormax Media at Meta’s inaugural Marketing Summit: Micro-Drama Edition. Titled “Micro Dramas: The India Story” and based on 2,000 personal interviews and 50 depth interviews conducted between November 2025 and January 2026 across 14 states, it is the most comprehensive study of the category in India to date, and its findings are striking.
Sixty-five per cent of viewers discovered micro dramas within the last year. Of those, 89 per cent stumbled upon the format through social media feeds, primarily Instagram and Facebook, without ever searching for it. The algorithm did the heavy lifting. Discovery, as the report puts it bluntly, is algorithm-led, not intent-led.
The typical viewer journey begins with accidental exposure while scrolling, moves through a cliffhanger-driven incompletion hook that makes stopping feel unfinished, and is reinforced by algorithmic repetition until habitual consumption sets in. Only then, when a platform asks for an app download or a payment, does the viewer pause. Trust, not content quality, determines what happens next, and many simply return to the free feed rather than pay. It is a funnel with a wide mouth and a narrow neck.
The numbers on consumption tell their own story. Viewers spend a median of 3.5 hours per week watching micro dramas, spread across seven to eight sessions of roughly 30 minutes each, peaking sharply between 8pm and midnight. Daytime viewing is snackable and low-commitment, squeezed into morning commutes, work breaks and coffee pauses. Night-time is where the format truly lives: private, uninterrupted and, for many viewers, socially invisible. Ninety per cent watch alone, compared to just 43 per cent for long-form OTT content. Half the audience watches during their commute, well above the 37 per cent figure for streaming platforms, a direct reflection of the format’s low time investment advantage.
The audience itself breaks into three segments. Incidental viewers, comprising 39 per cent of the total, are passive consumers who stumble in and rarely seek content actively. Intent-building viewers, the largest group at 43 per cent, are beginning to form habits and seek out episodes but remain cautious. High-intent viewers, just 18 per cent, are the ones who download apps, tolerate ads and occasionally pay: skewing male, younger and urban.
What audiences want from the content is revealing. The top three genres are romance at 72 per cent, family drama at 64 per cent and comedy at 63 per cent, precisely the same top three as Hindi general entertainment television. The format rewards emotional familiarity over complexity. Romance in particular thrives because it demands low cognitive investment, needs no elaborate world-building and plays naturally into the private, pre-sleep viewing window where inhibitions lower and emotional intimacy feels safe.
The most-recalled shows, led by Kuku TV titles such as The Lady Boss Returns, The Billionaire Husband and Kiss My Luck, share a common narrative DNA: rich-poor conflict, hidden identities, power imbalances, melodrama and cliffhangers that make stopping feel physically uncomfortable. Predictability, the research warns, is fatal. Each episode must re-earn attention from scratch.
The terminology question is telling. Despite the industry’s embrace of the phrase “micro drama,” viewers have not adopted it. They call the content “short story videos,” “short dramas,” “reels with stories” or simply “serials.” One respondent from Chennai said bluntly that “micro sounds like a scientific word.” The category is at the stage that OTT occupied in 2019 and podcasts in the same year: widely consumed, poorly named and not yet crystallised in the public imagination.
Platform awareness remains alarmingly thin. Only three platforms, Kuku TV at 78 per cent, Story TV at 46 per cent and Quick TV at 28 per cent, have crossed the 20 per cent awareness threshold. The rest languish in single digits. This creates a trust deficit that directly throttles monetisation: viewers who cannot remember which app they used are hardly primed to enter their payment details.
Yet the appetite is clearly there. Sixty-five per cent of viewers watch only Indian content, drawn by the TV-serial familiarity of the storytelling, the comfort of Hindi as a shared language and the sight of actors they half-recognise from decades of television. South languages are rising fast: Tamil, Telugu and Kannada together account for 24 per cent of first-choice viewing. And AI-generated content, still a novelty, has landed better than expected: 47 per cent of viewers call it creative and unique, with only 6 per cent actively rejecting it.
Shweta Bajpai, director, media and entertainment (India) at Meta, called micro drama “a category that is rewriting the rules of Indian entertainment,” adding that the discovery engine being social distinguishes this wave from previous content formats. Shailesh Kapoor, founder and chief executive of Ormax Media, was characteristically measured: the format, he said, is showing “the early signs of becoming a distinct content category” and, given how closely it aligns with natural mobile behaviour, “has the potential to scale very quickly.”
The format’s fundamental mechanics are working. It enters lives quietly, through boredom and a scrolling thumb, and burrows in through incompletion and habit. The challenge now is monetisation: converting a category of highly engaged but deeply anonymous viewers into paying customers who trust the platform enough to hand over their UPI credentials. The story, as any micro-drama writer knows, is only as good as the next cliffhanger. India’s platforms had better have one ready.
