Telecom Lead India: TRAI will recommend to the Government
that there is no need for separate exit policy for telecom service providers
and that the entry fee paid by the licensees will continue to be
non-refundable.
TRAI said that present conditions in various licences
with regard to surrender of licences, whereby licensee can surrender its
licence by giving a notice of at least 60 calendar days in advance, shall
continue to be applicable.
In fact, on the issue
of refund of entry fee, several stakeholders favored refund of entry fee on
pro-rata basis subject to fulfillment of license condition.
The TRAI recommendation is based on the comments received
from stakeholders and keeping in view the Supreme Court judgement of February
2, 2012.
However, telecom sStakeholders are requested to provide
their comments/views on this proposed response April 5, 2012.
TRAI had earlier issued a pre-consultation paper on
Exit-Policy for various telecom licences on January 6, 2012, according to the
response paper on Issues relating to exit policy for various telecom licences.
Regarding future licenses under category (d), TRAI had
already recommended that all future licenses will be unified licenses and the
entry fee for Pan-India licence is only Rs.20 crore and for service area based
licence, it is only Rs 2 crore, Rs 1 crore and Rs 50 lakh for Metro & A
category, B category and C category service areas respectively,” TRAI said.
The provision for surrender of license is already
prescribed in the draft guidelines. As such, the Authority does not find any
justification for a separate exit policy in case of Unified Licensing Regime, according to TRAI.
