Telecom war flares up, Ambani slams COAI

Escalalting the ongoing telecom war, the Reliance Communications chairman Anil Ambani on Monday...

Escalalting the ongoing telecom war, the Reliance Communications chairman Anil Ambani on Monday fired the first salvo against the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) — the body of GSM players — against its move to challenge the new spectrum norms.

“COAI does not represent the telecom industry and their propaganda on spectrum allocation was misleading. Initially, five companies out of nine took the matter to the apex tribunal TDSAT. I believe, two of them have already dissociated from the case,” Ambani said.

Aircel, Spice Telecom, Idea Cellular, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone-Essar had moved the TDSAT under the banner of COAI, challenging the Centre’s new norms on spectrum allocation and allowing usage of dual technology. Aircel and Spice Telecom have since then withdrawn cases against the Department of Telecom. “Others have also realised that this was an unwarranted, unnecessary and misguided action by the COAI, against the future of competition,” Ambani added.

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The controversy over spectrum allocation and dual technology had reached Prime Minister’s Office, which sought clarification from telecom minister A Raja on various related issues. On RCom (which is a CDMA player) entering into GSM and getting spectrum, Ambani said, “The licences are technology neutral, they were upheld by Trai and recommended to the DoT. We were issued permission to operate on both the platforms and we have paid a fee of more than Rs 1,650 crore”.

RCom, Microsoft in $500m IPTV pact

MUMBAI: Reliance Communications on Monday signed a $500-million contract with Microsoft Corp to sell Internet television (IPTV) to customers in India. Reliance’s IPTV service, powered by the Microsoft Mediaroom platform, will allow it to deliver entirely new, connected and personalised television experiences for Indian consumers, with several advanced features. IPTV subscribers will be able to watch popular standard definition content as well as high definition content for the first time in India. The service will be launched by March 2008.