The Hindu : TRAI decides to expand scope of unified licensing

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Aug 05, 2003

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TRAI decides to expand scope of unified licensing

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI AUG 4. Acceding to requests from cellular companies, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) today decided to expand the scope of unified licensing by including national long distance (NLD), international long distance (ILD) and Internet services.

So far, the TRAI had restricted unified licensing to basic and cellular services but cellular companies complained that the scope was too narrow and called for the inclusion of other related services, such as the NLD and ILD. Announcing the inclusion of other services in the scope of the unified licence, it said that it would welcome more "viable'' proposals in this regard.

A second addendum to its consultation paper on unified licensing relates to correcting the entry fee paid by basic phone companies. According to the latest revised data received from the Department of Telecommunication (DoT), the maximum fee was paid by Hughes Telecom for Maharashtra (Rs. 532.55 crores) followed by Reliance Telecom for Gujarat (Rs. 179.09 crores).

The HFCL Infotel paid Rs. 177.59 crores for Punjab, Tata Teleservices Rs. 161.47 crores for Andhra Pradesh, Bharti Telenet Rs. 35.33 crores for Madhya Pradesh and Shyam Telelink Rs. 29.29 crores for Rajasthan.

The revised table also includes two new entries for the Reliance Telecom which paid Rs. 20 crores and Rs. 1 crore for Rajasthan and Andaman and Nicobar.

These figures will be crucial when the TRAI gets down to calculating equalisation of the licence fee paid to the Central exchequer.

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