The government may decide today on the plan to reduce the licence fee for new national long distance (NLD) and international long distance (ILD) licences to a uniform Rs 2.5 crore from the existing Rs 100 crore and Rs 25 crore, respectively, with diluted roll-out obligations.According to sources, the full Telecom Commission is meeting here to take a final view on the reduction in licence fee - a move which could put existing players like Bharti, Reliance Infocomm and VSNL at a big disadvantage.According to the prposal, there would be no mandatory roll-out obligations for future NLD licencees. Existing companies would also be exempted from mandatory roll-out obligations with effect from January 1, 2006.The proposal is seen as a major advantage to players like Hutch-Essar as they have been offering mobile services virtually across the country, and procuring an NLD licence now would give them advantage over existing players.It can be recalled that the three telecom majors - Bharti, Reliance and VSNL - had demanded huge compensation of over Rs 2,700 crore in view of heavy investments made by them to roll out networks besides paying Rs 100 crore as licence fee.
