The Hindu : Time for a final solution

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 15, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Time for a final solution

WITH THE TELECOM controversy becoming messier by the day, it is time the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and the Government moved with some urgency to resolve the issue once and for all. The first salvo in a fresh round of legal battles has been fired by the companies offering limited mobility telecom services with wireless in local loop (WLL-M) technology. These companies, holding licences to provide basic services, have gone to the Supreme Court against one aspect of the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal judgment of last August. Their complaint is against the order directing the Government to collect an entrance fee from them to correct the imbalances caused by the 2001 decision permitting limited mobility. A decision by the Government that aims to untangle the wires on the contentious issue of limited mobility will not end litigation. However, compared with the uncertainty caused by the Government and the regulator dragging their feet, it will at least have the merit of nudging the disputing parties towards a solution to a problem that the Government created two years ago by blurring the differences between the licences for cellular and basic services.

The Group of Ministers that has been discussing this issue has announced that the Government will enforce the TDSAT order that the WLL-M providers restrict their services to a short distance charging area (SDCA), usually a single town or city. Curiously, the group has not set a time frame for implementation of the decision although the TDSAT had suggested a two-month deadline after its judgment of August 2003. The Government's task has become more complicated because the Telecom Engineering Centre has observed that the providers of WLL-M services are not violating their licence agreements. Yet this "non-violation" appears more of a technical argument than adherence to the spirit of the licences awarded to basic service operators. Call forwarding and multiple registrations of the kind offered in WLL-M phones, which allow users to receive and make calls outside the SDCA, may or may not violate the basic service licences. But while this is not "seamless roaming" of the kind possible in cellular services, it does neutralise the one advantage that the holders of cellular service licences have over the basic service operators, an advantage for which they claim they have paid heavy licence fees. However, there are now more than four million subscribers to limited mobility services. This is a fait accompli of a challenging kind. Will the Government be able to take away from this subscriber base the roaming facility option marketed by WLL-M service providers?

In such a situation, the only feasible solution is to move to a unified licence regime where both cellular and basic service operators will hold a single licence. Of course, this is easier said than done. Should basic service operators be made to pay a one-time entrance fee and, if so, what should it be? Should cellular service operators' licences simultaneously be modified so that a lower share of revenues is paid to the Government? Should these operators also be "compensated" for the decision on WLL-M? These are some very difficult questions that TRAI and the Government have to tackle. But the credibility of the regulator and the entire decision-making process has taken such a terrible beating in this episode that the sooner the Government demonstrates that it is working on a fair settlement, the better it will be for the telecom industry and the exploding population of users. Much now depends on the recommendations on a unified licence regime that TRAI is to submit by the end of October.

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