While both Trai and the finance ministry insisted on 49 per cent foreign equity in the GMPCS, DoT had suggested foreign equity up to a maximum of 25 per cent. Finally, Trai and the finance ministry prevailed.

The major argument of the finance ministry was that restricting foreign equity to 25 per cent in GMPCS as against 49 per cent in basic and cellular services would have negative implications on FDI. Trai too argued in favour of a review of the decision.

The finance ministry had also sought to object DoT's decision to issue licences on a "first-come-first-serve" basis aswell as granting licences to Iridium, ICo-P and Ascom.

DoT's reply to the query was that a "first-come-first-serve" method will avoid need for tendering as well as artificially limiting the number of operators. This will highlight the transparency on the part of the government in inducting GMPCS technology, it said.

Even Trai had suggested that the first-come-first-serve policy could be adopted along with some eligibility criteria to weed out non-serious applicants.

Trai also raised the issue of establishing gateways in India and suggested that their operations and maintenance be carried out by designated agencies only. Similarly, it also raised the issue of security concerns along the lines raised by the ministry of home affairs.

The ministry of home affairs was particularly concerned with the security aspect and suggested that the border districts of Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu sharing international borders should be kept in a different category in order to make global mobile handsetsnon-usable.

Trai also advocated single licence for the operation of gateways and service pertaining to one network. This is to ease the operation and avoid many agencies. There will be two operators--one for managing space segment and another for ground segment.

Meanwhile, official sources maintained that the government was not responsible for any goof up on Iridium's failure on the India launch of the GMPCS early this month. "India is one of the first few countries in the SAARC region which has granted the provisional licence to IITL to enable the company to start commercial operations of the GMPCS on the same day as their global launch," sources maintained.

These sources said that even issues relating to inter-connect and security clauses were sorted out in one day to facilitate the global launch.