Telecom Panel finalises Trai offer, no cap on cos

The Telecom Commission, the policy making wing of Department of Telecom, is understood to have taken a final view on regulator Trai’s licensing reform proposals including the one that there be no cap on number of operators in a circle. Some of the proposals have been accepted, some tweaked and some have been rejected, sources said. The Commission opined that auction of additional spectrum is not a considerable idea at the moment, keeping in mind the affordability and low teledensity.
The report of the Commission will now be put up before Communications Minister A. Raja at the earliest and depending on his approval, the new licensing policy may be unveiled "at any moment". Although senior officials kept mum over the details of the proposals that has been finalised by the Commission, some of these recommendations which have been accepted are bringing down the combined subscriber base criteria from 67 per cent to 40 per cent in the merged entity in case of merger and acquisitions. Stating that licenses were always "technology neutral", sources said the aspirants for offering dual technology under the same licence would have an entry fee of a UASL licence to get the spectrum.