New Delhi, Nov 17: The Supreme Court today posted the interim application of Cellular Operators Association of India for final hearing in the first week of December but refused to order status quo on service-specific licensing regime as sought by the cellular operators. A bench comprising justice S Rajendra Babu and Justice G P Mathur posted the application for hearing in the first week of December. The cellular operators had, last week, sought a direction to government to maintain status quo regarding the number and type of cellular mobile licences issued separately or along with any other type of licence. "The applicant, by way of present application, is seeking appropriate directions to maintain present regime of service-specific licensing in the telecom sector until a conclusive adjudication of the disputes raised in the appeal, which includes a determination of the cellular operators' contractual, constitutional, statutory, legal and other rights of the appellants (COAI) by this court," the application had said.
Terming the unified access licence regime as "improper, incorrect, unreasonable and unfair", COAI had said the decision was carried out with a pre-determined mind and with "unseemly haste" to benefit only one set of telecom operators.

They had 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.

The cellular operators, in their application, had termed the whole process of unified access licensing regime as a "clear case of misuse of process of law."
Bureau Report