India, Aug. 22 -- The government dropped its plan to build a single, shared database - called the Biometric Identity Verification System (BIVS) - that would have assigned a unique ID to every user and let every telecom company check a customer's identity against every other company's records. This was the central change in the newly notified Telecommunications (User Identification) Rules, 2026 by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on August 21.

Under section 3(7) of the Telecommunications Act 2023, an entity has to identify the person to whom it provides telecommunication services through verifiable biometric based identification. With BIVS gone, no more cross-industry biometric matching would happen and verification will happen ...