More competition soon

Taking his title as 8216;Telecom Man of the Year8217; 2001 seriously, Communications Minister Pramod Mahajan on Friday made a slew of announcements which could have far reaching implications for the sector. While hinting at the possibility of allowing more competition in the cellular sector, Mahajan also made an oblique reference to the regulators, TRAI and the TDSAT progressing at a very slow pace to resolve disputes and nagging problems in the telecom sector. Mahajan was speaking on the occasion of receiving the award by the Pacific Telecommunication Council PTC India Foundation.

Mahajan also said that his ministry would support any proposal relating to hiking foreign direct investment cap in telecom sector to 74 per cent from the existing 49 per cent.

Referring to greater competition in the cellular segment of the market, which currently has up to four players in each circle, Mahajan said 8216;I have visualised a scenario with fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth cellular operators.8217; He hit out at private operators for levelling charges of predatory pricing against BSNL saying, 8216;if a rate-cut by private sector is customer-oriented, why is an aggressive tariff by BSNL predatory?8217;

Issuing a warning to VSNL, recently taken over by the Tatas, Mahajan said that BSNL and MTNL would shift to other international long distance players from October 1, 2002, if VSNL failed to come out with concrete interconnect proposal.