New Delhi, Nov 14: The Supreme Court today admitted cellular operators' interim application seeking stay on issuance of new mobile licences by DoT to basic operators like Reliance and Tatas and listed it for hearing on Monday. The interim application, which was filed by Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) yesterday, was mentioned today before a bench comprising Justice S Rajendra Babu and Justice G P Mathur and listed for hearing on Monday.
The cellular operators had sought direction to Department of Telecom (DoT) to maintain "status quo" as on August 08 when a telecom tribunal (TDSAT) order upheld government's decision to permit basic operators to offer WLL limited mobile service.
COAI's stay application is aimed at blocking issuance of new mobile licences under the unified regime, for which government issued final guidelines earlier this week.
Within three days of notifying the unified regime, Reliance Infocomm has already paid Rs 1542 crore to convert its licences into unified to become eligible for offering fully mobile services on its WLL phones.
Even Tata Teleservices, HFCL and Shyam Telecom have applied for conversion of their existing service-specific licences into new unified licence and Shyam Telecom has also paid about Rs 2.96 crore to DoT for the purpose.
Bureau Report