NEW DELHI, JULY 12: The government is considering four options whilefinalising the National Long Distance (NLD) policy which will end Departmentof Telecommunications' (DoT) monopoly in the area of domestic long distancecalls or STD calls. The matter is scheduled to come up for discussion at themeeting of the Full Telecom Commission tomorrow which is meeting to debateand find a consensus on the options before the government.The full Telecom Commission consists of the Finance secretary, secretaryPlanning Commission, secretary Ministry of Information Technology, Industrysecretary who are all part-time members of the Telecom Commission. Apartfrom this it also includes full time members of the Telecom Commission -member services, finance, production and technical. The meeting is chairedby the Telecom secretary who is also the chairman of the TelecomCommission.The option that the government is considering include - free competitionamong the number of operators entering the field, auctioning of the revenueshare, auctioning of the entry fee or a mix of stringent selection criteriafor operators being allowed to come in and an auctioning of the entry fee.While the DoT favours an auction of the entry fee, it is under tremendouspressure from several quarters - including the Planning Commission and fromsome members of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) - to go infor free competition in the sector. According to senior DoT officials, Freecompetition would bring in several non-serious players and be add pressureon the resources like bandwidth etc. Fixing stringent selection criteria,DoT officials point out, could also turn out to be counter-productivebecause during the last round when telecom licences were auctioned forcellphone services in 1994, companies which were not allowed to bid based onsuch criteria had dragged the government to court.The DoT top brass is also hesitant to auction revenue share and licences beawarded to the bidder of the highest revenue share offered by the company tothe government. This, according to sources, has not been tried in any othercountry so it could be unexplored territory.The domestic long distance market was supposed to be thrown open forcompetition in January, 2000.However, first the erstwhile TRAI which had studied the subject, helddiscussions and open houses on the issue before giving its recommendationsto the government, was wound up by the government. Later a new TRAI was constituted which again took some time to give itsrecommendations for a second time. In fact, one of the part-time members ofthe TRAI- Rakesh Mohan, who is the Director General of the National Councilfor Applied Economic Research (NCAER) sent a dissent note, differing fromthe main recommendations of the TRAI.Owing to these delays, the NLD policy has been in-the-making for a long timenow. Even if the Full Telecom Commission does come to a consensus on therecommendations for the policy tomorrow, it may still have to go to theCabinet before it is finally flagged off.
