New Delhi, Nov 15: The government on Friday allowed Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices, who between them have paid over Rs 2,000 crore, to convert their WLL services into fully mobile by amending their existing licences to a single unified licence. "We have amended Reliance, Tatas, Shyam Telecom and HFCL`s licences into new unified one... all these players would now be governed by the final guidelines of unified licence regime," Telecom Secretary Vinod Vaish told reporters. There is no need to issue a new licence to them, he added.
When contacted Ashok Sud, chief regulatory officer of Tata Teleservices said, "The company has received a letter from DoT in this regard.”
He said the letter mentioned that the company would no longer be governed by the old service specific licence in the existing six circles and would now be governed by the terms of new unified service licence in these circles. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Friday fixed Monday for hearing cellular operators` interim application seeking staus quo for service specific licencing regime in the wake of the government`s decision to introduce the unified access regime, which would allow WLL operators to offer full mobility.
In their application, the Cellular Operators Association of India has termed the unified access licence regime as "improper, incorrect, unreasonable and unfair" and said the decision has been carried out with a predetermined mind and with "unseemly haste" to benefit only one set of telecom operators.
They said the recent decision of the cabinet was violative of the National Telecom Policy – 1999 as well as the contractual provisions of the agreement between the cellular operators and the government.
Bureau Report