These include 2G auction, uniform licence fee, credit policy & rural rollout, among others.
Top telecom honchos, who met the country’s key policy makers last week, listed key areas on which the industry has a consensus, besides important issues such as ‘licencing and contractual matters’, on which they were in “constructive dialogue” among themselves.
The communication given to the government lists about a dozen areas covering both sets of matters. These include the contentious 3G intra-circle roaming agreements, spectrum sharing, mergers and acquisitions, and auction of the700 Mhz spectrum in which all operators could participate.
The company heads had met the Prime Minister, finance minister, communications minister and commerce minister. The bigwigs included Bharti’s Sunil Mittal, the ADAG group’s Anil Ambani, the Aditya Birla Group’s Kumar Mangalam Birla, Tata’s Ishaat Hussain and Vodafone’s Vittorio Colao
The areas on which a clear consensus has emerged include auctioning of 2G spectrum, uniform licence fee to be six per cent across all services and circles, support in the form of lending by banks and financial institutions to the sector, incentivising telcos for faster rural roll out, review of the definition of Adjusted Gross Revenue for both telecom service providers and IP-1companies, amongst others.
While none of the operators were ready to come on record on what took place in the meetings, a top executive of one of the companies present denied any difference of opinion. “The annexure had 12 points, on all of which we have a consensus. On some other issues, we are in dialogue and have told the government we will get back to them once we have a consensus.”
Queried as to why the communication had given two lists –one area in which there was a consensus and another where there should be a consensus, he said, “It was a typing mistake”.
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On the day of the meeting, at least one operators made it clear there were varying perceptions on certain areas, such as 3G roaming. Three operators – Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular -- have come under scrutiny for signing a roaming agreement to enable each to offer pan-India 3G services without directly owning spectrum in many of the circles. The three have told policy makers that they see nothing illegal in the arrangement.
In their meetings, the industry heads made a strong pitch that 2G spectrum should be auctioned in such a way that there should be enough spectrum available for bidding. The auctions could be held on a continuous basis, maybe once in two or three years, ensuring transparency in the process.
The move came after the Telecom Commission, the telecom ministry’s top decision making body, began a series of meetings to take a final decision on the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s recommendation on many of these issues — such as pricing of 2G spectrum, uniform licence fee, comprehensive merger and acquisition policy and spectrum sharing, among others.