The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has said device manufacturers will not be mandated to make smartphones D2M-compatible, raising questions over the adoption of Direct-to-Mobile broadcasting in India.

MeitY suggested D2M capability should remain voluntary for device manufacturers, effectively ruling out a mandatory requirement. The government’s position settles a key question surrounding D2M’s commercial rollout.

The Committee of Secretaries has approved the 470-582 MHz spectrum band for D2M broadcasting and cleared a public-private partnership model. Public broadcaster Prasar Bharati is expected to float a request for proposal within a month.

D2M lets users stream live TV and multimedia directly to phones without internet, targeting India’s 200 million feature-phone users. Pilots have shown it can offload 25-30 per cent of video traffic from 5G networks.

D2M technology was developed with IIT Kanpur. Lava and HMD have made low-cost feature phones with D2M chips. Existing users could get broadcasts through a Rs 500-600 dongle.