Communication min tries to pacify warring telecos

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Facing flak for its policies and decisions in the last one year, like dual technology and doling out spectrum to new players that led to numerous legal cases involving even DoT, Ministry of Communications and IT has decided to broker peace among various warring parties.

In a move to give out-of-court settlements a try, Communications and IT Minister A Raja is likely to meet all the operators concerned to resolve the disputes.

Besides the numerous legal cases, the ministry is especially concerned about the twin disputes pertaining to GSM operators challenging Raja's decision to allow dual technology for mobile services and the opposite camp of CDMA players seeking spectrum back from existing players beyond 6.2 MHz.

Both cases are pending with the telecom tribunal TDSAT and are likely to come up for hearing in next a few weeks.

According to senior officials in DoT, the minister wants to settle all controversies before his tenure comes to an end in another 6-8 months.

Raja has asked Telecom Secretary Siddartha Behura to convene a meeting of the two rival camps--GSM and CDMA operators--and initiate the process of brokering peace.

A recent deal in the telecom space, in which a new operator Swan offloaded 45 per cent stake for USD 900 million without any infrastructure in place, has given further credence to the belief of existing players that spectrum to new-comers had been granted at throw-away prices and the government had lost thousands of crores in the process.

The existing GSM players have been saying that auctioning of 2G spectrum could have given real value to scarce radio frequency, whereas Raja feels any increase in spectrum prices would have made the services unaffordable.

Raja had recently ruled out auctioning of 2G spectrum. It may be considered for additional spectrum but for the start-up spectrum to new players, DoT has no plans to amend the rules at this time.

Ever since Raja assumed office, telecom sector has witnessed an exponential growth with addition of nine million users every month, but the department also got locked in several legal battles.

Sources said DoT is likely to ask the players to withdraw respective cases particularly on dual technology and spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz.