New Delhi, Sept 11: In the wake of ongoing dispute between cellular and basic operators on WLL services, the government tonight constituted a Group of Ministers headed by Finance Minister Jaswant Singh to resolve the issue and also recommend steps for unification of licenses. The group would chart out a course to universal licence, review adequacy of steps for enforcing limited mobility within local call area for WLL services for basic operators and recommend future course of action in this regard, the government notification said. The group, approved by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, includes Defence Minister George Fernandes, Law Minister Arun Jaitley, Communication and IT Minister Arun Shourie, Exeternal Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha and I&B Minister Ravi Shankar Parsad.

The Constitution of GoM comes at a time when the sector has been embroiled in number of controversies and disputes over mobility turf.

Both basic and cellular operators have locked horns over the legality and scope of WLL (m) service in terms of its service range. The dispute over WLL was aggravated with Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) proposing to unify the licenses in order to resolve the issue once for all, a move severely criticised by the cellular operators.

Bureau Report