The fiduciary responsibility to national security and traceability is the key motive of SIM-binding regulations for Over-The-Top (OTT) communication platforms that comes into effect on February 28, said Union Minister for Communications and Development of North-Eastern Region Jyotiraditya Scindia on Friday.
Speaking at the Rising Bharat Summit 2026, Scindia said he hoped all OTT service providers complied with the directions. “...When you connect the phone to the OTT platforms with a mobile number and then remove the SIM, the OTT platforms are still active, and we cannot trace who is carrying out the activities. Therefore, SIM-binding becomes mandatory from a security standpoint,” he said.
The regulations, which were announced in November 2025, require OTT messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal and others to forcibly log out users on their web versions every six hours and to stop functioning if the user does not have a registered SIM for their device.
According to reports and a post on WhatsApp Beta site dated February 24, the Meta-owned platform is working towards integrating SIM-linkage as part of a future update.
Apart from the SIM-binding notification, the Union Minister said that satellite-based communication will be key for taking broadband to difficult terrains and ensuring a backup in case of natural calamities. While Starlink, Jio, and OneWeb have already been granted satellite communication licences, the satellite spectrum pricing was yet to be decided.
“All three companies have been given a normative spectrum assignment to demonstrate compliance regarding security protocols. As far as government is concerned, DoT will synthesise the recommendations from TRAI and come out with their decision on spectrum pricing, as we are going by allocation of spectrum and not auction,” said Scindia.
The minister also highlighted that the Indian government was working towards forming a global alliance for standardising 6G protocols and had already partnered with 30 countries.
“A paper submitted on the 6G standard setting protocol is under discussion and India has contributed to 10 percent of the patents towards 6G adoption. India today is no longer following but we are setting the standards along with other stakeholders,” he added.
First Published: Feb 27, 2026, 14:33
Subscribe Now