Heads of telecom operators, including Sunil Mittal of
Bharti Airtel, Anil Ambani of Reliance Communications and Vittorio Colao of
Vodafone met prime minister Manmohan Singh, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee
and telecom minister Kapil SIbal to seek an early solution to the dispute over
agreement on 3G roaming services and one-time fee for additional spectrum.
The deadlock is continuing as the telecom heads are yet
to convince the ministers on their view points.
Both the 3G roaming issue and fee for additional spectrum can damage investor
confidence in the Indian telecom industry.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Telecom
Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) have termed the existing agreement among
operators for offering pan-India 3G services, despite not having spectrum in
all the circles, as violation of licence norms.
Besides 3G roaming, operators also discussed various issues like one-time fee
additional spectrum held by GSM operators and Trai’s recommendations on merger
and acquisition, according to a report in Economic Times.
Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea have entered into a roaming pact among
themselves in circles in which they had failed to bag 3G spectrum auction held
last year.
Recently, the DoT had said in an internal note that the roaming agreement among
telecom companies for 3G services would lead to a significant loss of revenue
for the government.
There may also be an impact on revenues from spectrum usage charges collected
from operators, according to the internal note prepared by the DoT.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
