A year after the Tatas exited from the country?s fifth largest mobile operator, Idea Cellular, the Birlas have once again accused them of hampering the company?s growth and preventing it from emerging as a pan-India player.
As a remedy, the AV Birla group company now wants its application for licences to operate in nine more circles to be treated as a special case and to fall outside policy recommendation.
The Tatas, who held 48.14% in Idea, exited the company last June in favour of the Birlas after an acrimonious war of words, with the latter alleging that its joint venture partner was stalling its growth while concentrating on its own CDMA-based Tata Teleservices Ltd.
Idea, which operates in 11 circles with 16 million subscribers, received licences for two more circles?Bihar and Mumbai ?this year, but is yet to get spectrum. Its application for operating in nine more circles is pending with DoT.
In a letter to Trai, which is conducting a review of licensing norms, Idea said its new licence applications in the post-unified access service licence (UASL) regime were stalled by DoT due to non-conformance with the cross-holding requirement.
?The situation was eventually remedied only with the exit of the JV partner from Idea on June 20, 2006. On June 26, and within six days of the exit of the JV partner, Idea made UASL applications for the balance nine circles,? the letter stated. ?Our JV partner had large holdings both in Idea, and also in their own fixed services company. The JV partner availed of the concession first given to them and converted fixed licenses to UASL across India,? it added.
The government had stipulated November 11, 2003 as a cut-off date for migrating to UASL. Players who paid the fourth licence winning bid of the cellular services licence before the date were kept out of the purview of the cross-holding guideline, which bars a company from having more than 10% in another company in the same circle.