The Apex Advisory Council for Telecom in India, a joint telecom industry initiative of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUSPI), is planning to seek the intervention of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) to be allowed to use the Aadhaar biometric database to expedite subscriber verification process.

The operators are likely to urge the PMO to advise the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to abolish the current subscriber verification process and implement the Aadhar e-know your customer (KYC) service on a permanent basis at the earliest. The operators are of the view that this will be a more convenient, secure and cost-effective way than the current system. Further, they reckon that it will help enable instant activations on account of less paperwork.

In the past, DoT has also supported the concept of Aadhar-based verification. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has, however, objected to this proposal as it believes that biometric authentication is not a foolproof system for establishing a mobile customer's proof of address.