New Delhi, Oct 15: Migration to unified licence regime could cost Reliance upto Rs 1000 crore and Tatas Rs 500 crore, according to estimates being worked out by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. According to sources the basic operators combined would have to shell out upto Rs 2,000 crore to migrate to the unified licence regime from the existing service specific licence.
The Group of Ministers on telecom, headed by Finance Minister Jaswant Singh, has already decided in principle to move to unified licence regime and noted banker Deepak Parikh and TRAI Chairman Pradip Baijal have made presentations before the GoM on migration path to the proposed regime.
Since some of the basic operators also have cellular licences in some circles, the migration fee would depend upon the number of licence they want to convert into unified licences.
Sources said that in case the three big operators, Reliance Infocomm, Tata Teleservices and Bharti, desire to migrate to unified licence regime they together would have to pay Rs 1,900 crore and the balance Rs 100 crore would come from small regional players like HFCL and Shyam Telecom.
Bharti group has basic licence in Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana amongst other circles and if the company migrates to unified licence it would have to pay upto Rs 400 crore.
Bureau Report