New Delhi, Oct 21: Cellular operators may get a big financial incentive by way of being allowed to restructure their costly debts as part of a compensation to move towards unified licence regime. Cellular industry's total debt ranges between Rs 12,000-15,000 crore while the total investment is Rs 25,000 crore, sources said.

According to industry sources, the proposal in this regard may come up for discussion in the forthcoming meeting of Group of Ministers on telecom, currently looking into the ways to resolve the mobility turf war between WLL and cellular operators. Though the cellular industry has been demanding cash compensation in lieu of allowing basic operators to offer WLL mobile services but the demand did not get much favour among the members of the GoM.

Sources said the proposal could be mooted by the financial institutions in view of their huge exposure in the cellular industry and on apprehensions of their loans becoming bad debts. Cellular industry had recently claimed that it was facing massive losses to the tune of over Rs 7,000 crore.

When contacted, Cellular Operators' Association of India (COAI) Director-General T V Ramachandran said, "the cellular industry is running at high losses and part of the losses is due to high financing cost."

"If the interest rates are brought down it could help in reducing our losses," he said and added that he was not aware of any such move. Bureau Report