The final norms for telecom unified licences (UL) regime will be sent to the law ministry within a week for vetting and approval, said a department of telecommunications official.
The new licence, which will form the crux of the New Telecom Policy 2011 (NTP 2011), has proposed to merge all licences ? mobile, landline, Internet service and long distance ? into one universal licence. However, the spectrum will be delinked from the licence and all companies will compulsorily need to migrate to the UL regime when it gets notified.
?The Telecom Commission has already approved the final version of the UL norms,? said the senior DoT official, adding that the policy will be notified ?shortly?. The Telecom Commission is the highest decision-making body of the telecom department.
Telecom minister Kapil Sibal had recently said that DoT would soon take a final decision on the UL regime in consultation with the law ministry. Sibal had also said the new licencing regime would ensure fair competition.
A special committee, constituted to prepare the unified licence, has recommended two licences-? unified licence (national) and unified licence (service area) — for telecom operators. The committee had taken the decision after examining the recommendations of DoT and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).
According to broad features of UL, telecom companies holding the licence will be able to provide all services that existing licences permit as well as share spectrum and other active part of telecom infrastructure that were not permitted earlier.
Telecom service providers who want to provide any additional service apart from current offerings, will have to go for unified licence. In case of mergers and acquisitions also, the companies need to go for unified licence.
On the next round of spectrum auctions, the official said that a meeting of the empowered group of ministers (eGoM) is likely to take place next week. ?The eGoM will take a call on base price and timeline of the auction,? he added.
The government continues to be optimistic about holding the third round of radiowave sale by June-July and garner around Rs 40,847 crore of non-tax revenues for the exchequer in this fiscal. The Supreme Court had recently directed the government to put up for all the entire amount of spectrum released due to cancellation of mobile permits after its February 2012 ruling.
The panel of ministers is required to decide whether the base price should be further reduced for GSM spectrum. On the reserve price issue, the DoT had earlier proposed to the EGoM three options, including not changing the price at all or asking the telecom regulator to give fresh recommendations.