It seems the Indian telecom sector will remain in the news for the coming week, with new developments in the 2G spectrum scam case, and India’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Kapil Sibal, set to unveil the draft of the country’s new telecom policy, the National Telecom Policy 2011, on Monday.
The new policy is expected to focus on transparency and quick decision-making. The move is significant because the last telecom policy was unveiled in 1999 when India had only a few million phone subscribers. Also, the policy will be very important keeping in mind the ongoing controversy of the 2G scam, dubbed as one of the largest corruption scandals in the history of independent India.
An Indian business daily, The Economic Times, has already quoted Sibal as saying that “one of the key issues is to de-link the award of telecom operator licences from the allocation of airwaves since the bundling of these two had invited criticism and a spate of legal disputes.”
The newspaper has also reported that the new policy may remove the roaming charges on mobile connections within the country, which would mean an increase in calls by subscribers outside their home circle.
In other developments, the Indian parliament’s standing committee on Information Technology has rapped the Department of Telecom (DoT) for not taking action against telecom operators who have not carried out their roll out obligations after they received their licenses.
The DoT has listed S Tel (Jammu and Kashmir), Spice Communications (Andra Pradesh, Haryana, and Maharashtra), and Idea (Karnataka) as defaulters in their response to the committee’s query on the number of operators who have not yet rolled out their 2G services even after obtaining the license.
The committee has pointed out that despite these operators receiving their licenses four years back, they have not fulfilled their obligations to roll out the services and DoT has failed to take any action against them. It said the DoT has not terminated their licenses, nor have they recovered any damages from these companies.
According to the license agreement, the license can be cancelled if the operator fails to roll out the services within a stipulated time. Also, any delay in roll out of less than 52 weeks, the licensor (DoT) is entitled to recover charges from the licensee as per the rates mentioned in the agreements.
The committee has also pointed out confusion over the cancellation of licenses. It states, “While 74 UAS licenses were recommended for cancellation by TRAI for violation of rollout obligations, the department has taken action against 10 licensees only. The remaining 64 cases have been referred back to TRAI for reconsideration.”
