MTNL changes tack in cellular entry case

NEW DELHI, FEB 5: Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd MTNL has decided to change its tactics in fighting the case challenging the corporation's ...

NEW DELHI, FEB 5: Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd MTNL has decided to change its tactics in fighting the case challenging the corporation8217;s entry in the field of cellular telephony. MTNL has decided to engage a battery of top lawyers in the country to fight its case scheduled for its next hearing on February 11.

In a major change in stance, the private lawyers have been hired to represent the public sector basic telephone service provider in Delhi and Mumbai in addition to the Additional Solicitor General who was so far handling the case.

Highly placed sources say that the MTNL, which is playing its cards very close to its chest now, is likely to come up with a surprise quot;heavy weightquot; lawyer to argue their case.

The MTNL strategy, informed sources point out, now centres around disassociating itself from the ongoing battle for superamacy which is being fought undercover between the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India TRAI and the DoT. These sources explain that the stakes are too high for MTNL, witha GDR issue afloat in the international market, for them to risk being invloved in the specification of jurisdiction norms which is the bone of contention between the DoT and the TRAI.

The MTNL had requested the the hearing be advanced from the originally scheduled date of Feb 11. This was granted by the TRAI which advanced the hearing by a week. However, what came as a surprise was that while anxious to advance the hearing, MTNL came in with a new lawyer, Dipankar Gupta, and filed some additional documents yesterday morning the morning of the hearing. As expected, the legal counsel for the cellular operators requested for time to read the documents, again pushing the hearing to next week. This move is being speculated by observers as a deliberate move to buy time till the new battery of lawyers strategise the next move.

The documents submitted by MTNL yesterday include ads by the comapny in the 1986/1996 directory for providing mobile telephony and copies of applications of subscribers applying for themobile service. Their argument is that they are not new service providers and already had an ongoing mobile telephony service which they now wanted to modernise into a cellular service.