New Delhi, Feb 17: The group constituted by Communication and IT Minister Arun Shourie, to sort out the issues between cellular and basic operators, today discussed the issues of limited mobility and level playing field. "We discussed three issues concerning WLL based limited mobile services and some more information has been sought. The group will meet again on February 21 to deliberate further," Vinod Vaish, Chairman, Telecom Commission, told reporters after the first meeting of the group. The meeting which lasted for two-and-a-half-hours, was attended by Vaish, S Ramakrishnan (Tata Teleservices), BSNL Chairman and Managing Director Prithipal Singh, Asim Ghosh from Hutchison-Essar and Rajeev Chandrashekhar, President of Cellular Operators Association Of India.
Sunil Mittal of Bharti and Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Infocomm could not attend the meeting due to their other preoccupations and were represented by their officials. The meeting came two days after Shourie constituted the group comprising representatives from both segments of telecom industry -- cellular and basic in the wake of increasing number of litigations due to rift over WLL services.

Cellular and basic players offering WLL services are at loggerheads over limited mobility services and COAI recently moved telecom tribunal against basic players like Tatas and Reliance, alleging that they were flouting the license conditions. Telecom regulator TRAI had also sought clarifications from Tata Teleservices for offering services beyond the licensed area and from Reliance Infocomm on their offer of roaming on WLL phones.

Bureau Report