TRAI for one-licence regime

While cellphone companies would not have to pay additional fee, basic phone companies would have to pay an additional entry fee estimated to be in the region of Rs 479 crore for a pan-Indian unified licence.

The recommendations will now be considered by a Group of Ministers which is in the process of finding a solution to the impasse. The GoM consists of Finance Minister Jaswant Singh, Law and Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley, Defence Minister George Fernandes, Communications and IT Minister Arun Shourie and I&B Minister Ravi Shanker Prasad.

In the existing regime, cellular and WLL phone service providers pay different fees to provide telephony services and in the proposed regime, both will be allowed to offer both type of services.

Addressing newspersons here today, TRAI Chairman Pradip Baijal said: ‘‘For the new basic operators, the total additional entry fee payable for all circles for WLL services is estimated to be Rs 479.30 crore.’’ Baijal said the additional entry fee for WLL mobility should be charged from basic operators only for those circles where they provide WLL services.

‘‘If they provide such services in all circles, the estimated total additional entry fee for Reliance, operating in 17 circles, is estimated to be Rs 221.04 crore while that of Tata Teleservices and Bharti, operating in four circles each, are estimated to be Rs 129.13 crore each,’’ he said.

He, however, said that in case Bharti was not found to be offering WLL mobility services, then the liability would not be imposed on the company.

‘‘The existing operators would have an option to continue under the present licensing regime (with present terms and conditions) or migrate to new unified access licesing regime in the existing circle,’’ the TRAI has stated in its recommendations.

The licence fee, service area, roll-out obligation and performance bank guarantee under the new regime will remain the same as those of the existing cellular service providers.

While cellular operators will not be required to pay any further license fee for migrating to the new regime, the entry fee for basic/WLL service providers would be the difference between the license fee paid by the fourth cellular operator in the circle and the charges already paid by them. The TRAI today also recommended penalty on India’s largest private sector basic telephony service provider, Reliance Infocomm, for offering mobility services almost similar to cellular phones to its WLL subscribers. The TRAI said

Reliance should pay penalty over and above the entry fee. While Reliance welcomed TRAI’s recommendations for a unified regime saying it would end ‘‘licence raj’’ in the telecom sector, Bharti, which refrained from commenting on the ground that the matter was before the Group of Ministers, made a case for compensation from the government. ‘‘It appears that if these recommendations are implemented, the fixed licenses will become infructuous for which Bharti will expect refund of license fees along with suitable compensation from DoT,’’ a Bharti statement said.