"We had earlier approached the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) for granting extension till March 31, as it would have given us more time and also allowed the new telecom policy to come up with proposals in aid of the beleaguered industry," said SC Khanna, secretary general, Association of Basic Telecom Operators (ABTO).

Khanna said that operators had not yet given up hope and would make fresh attempts at convincing the PMO for a further relaxation in the deadline till March 31.

The Department of Electronics (DoT) has given the remaining 15 basic and cellular service providers one more week to pay up the 20 per cent outstanding licence fee and to furnish bank guarantees for the remaining 80 per cent.

"The extension does not provideany relief to us because if we could not pay up earlier, how can we do so in a matter of a few days," queried Modicom chief executive officer Umang Das.

Modicom, the cellular licensee for Karnataka and Punjab, said the government should have extended the deadline till March 31, to coincide with the new telecom policy. "The government should go into the reasons as to why an up-to-date paymaster like Modicom -- which has paid Rs 500 crore till date as licence fee -- has been forced to default for a smaller amount of Rs 52.75 crore," said Das.

Seeking to distinguish his company from perennial defaulters, Das said that the authorities should delve into the details and find out the intricacies of the problems like delays in financial closure of telecom projects being faced by operators.

Reiterating his company's decision not to pay up, Das said that any action arising out of it would be unfortunate for nearly 70,000 subscribers of the Modicom network. "In addition, a big question mark will be put on the Rs1,100-crore investment that we have made till date in our network," rued Das.But, DoT sources are hopeful that a number of defaulting companies will take advantage of the extension and pay up. "We expect atleast a couple of basic service operators to pay up in the forthcoming week," said a DoT official.Khanna was, however, doubtful about any of the four remaining basic service operators paying up. Stating that the basic service industry was already in a bad shape, Khanna expressed reservations over the DoT letter to the ministry of finance seeking a countervailing duty in the forthcoming budget on import of all telecom equipment.

"This will affect basic service operators who have sought a zero-duty regime for telecom products, in line with other infrastructure areas like power and oil," Khanna added. Local manufacturers who have to pay excise on domestically manufactured equipment, have asked for higher duties in order to remove anomalies in the existing duty structure.