Trai member Mr RRN Prasad, Mr C Karunakaran, vice-president BPL Innovision Business Group and Mr Shivendra Gupta, vice-president Kotak Mahindra and Mr A Mukherjee of Bombay Telephone Users Association were at the forefront who pressed for the need for a stable regulatory regime at a session on "policy issues relating to limited mobility through wireless in local loop (WLL) techniques in the access network by basic service providers." Similar open sessions would take place tomorrow at Chennai, on November 15 at Calcutta and on November 24 at New Delhi. Trai, in its background paper, has said that WLL would be different from laying of underground cable specially in congested areas which is not only cumbersome but also time consuming.

At the same time, Mr BM Khanna, former chairman and managing director of MTNL emphasised the need for containing the rental charges and tariff in a serious bid to increase the teledensity which is at present quite low in India. He recommended that if at all the cellular operators want to enter into basic telephony, they should charge on the lines of basic service operators taking into account the affordibility factor. Mr Prakash Bajpai, president and chief executive officer of Hughes Telecom demanded that the use of WLL technology should not be restricted.

From the telecommunications market (consumers, service providers, investors) point of view such restrictions will result in higher network and services costs, slower deployment of networks and services and reduced competition. Mr Bajpai said that from the existing basic service operations' (BSO) point of view, restricting the use of WLL systems will require the modification of the license terms under which BSOs have been operating and will result in constricting the benefits of substantial investments already made by BSOs.

Mr VK Sethi, chief technical officer, BPL Mobile Communications demanded that an additional frequency band of 900/1800 MHz should be provided to them in view of increase in traffic especially during peak period in the evening in south Mumbai. He informed that his company has been pursuing this issue with the authorities concerned as the frequency band has been occupied by the Defence Ministry. However, Mr Bajpai said that technology neutrality should not be interpreted as entitlement of frequency bands. Certain realms within the frequency bands have been allocated to BSOs and are already in use by them.