Tuesday,
January 21, 2003, Chandigarh, India
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Cell operators to interconnect
Tribune News Service
Union Minister for Telecommunication and Information Technology Pramod Mahajan (right) speaks with Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Mukesh D. Ambani during the inauguration of the Supercomm 2003 exhibition at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi on Monday.
— AFP |
New Delhi, January 20
The bitter mud-slinging between cellular operators and telecom sector watchdog Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) ended today with the former agreeing to allow with immediate effect the termination of calls of basic operators, including those originating from limited mobility phones functioning on the Wireless in Local Loop (WLL) platform. The impasse ended with the intervention of Communications Minister Pramod Mahajan, who promised to have a fresh look at the issue of a level playing field, ostensibly affecting aggrieved cellular operators. “In order to promote affordable cellular service in the
country, I have promised to look into their issues for a level playing field on an urgent basis. I am going to request the TRAI to come up with regulations for a just and fair interconnect regime”, Mr Mahajan told newspersons after a 90-minute meeting with cellular industry representatives at his office here this afternoon. At the same time, the minister, responding to a specific question on the crisis that took place over the weekend when the MTNL reportedly blanked out calls made to cellular phones in Delhi, said, “I was aware of it and I was not opposed to it”. Mr Mahajan, however, clarified that he was not playing the role of a super-regulator and was not circumventing the TRAI. “I have only resolved the interconnectivity issue, which is my job as a minister”, he said and added that he was not spelling out any specific tariff which was the domain of the regulator. Sources indicated that the minister has expressed the government’s utter displeasure at the way in which cellular operators sought to circumvent the instructions of the TRAI and also, to some extent, the Telecom Dispute Settlement Appelate Authority (TDSAT). Mr Mahajan, who returned yesterday from South Africa, is learnt to have been aware of the potentially dangerous slugfest taking place between the regulator and cellular operators during his absence. The minister, it is
learnt, forcefully conveyed to the operators that they were contractually bound to provide interconnectivity to any network and the latest crisis was primarily of their own making.On the contentious issue of providing a level playing field to GSM operators vis-a-vis WLL operators, Mr Mahajan bracketed the matter within two basic parameters: access charge and entry fee. “The issue of access charge will hopefully be resolved after the TRAI comes up with the Interconnect User Charges (IUC). They (cellular operators) have made up their case on the entry fee issue. But it should also be remembered that the fourth cellular operators in different circles came after the WLL players had already made their entry. It was their own conscious choice to enter the GSM business as the option of bidding for the WLL business was open to them”, the minister said. The TRAI is expected to come up with the much-awaited IUC regime this week. Industry observers, however, pointed out that the IUC could result in a situation where the price differential between GSM and WLL phones would reduce significantly. “The IUC is keenly awaited”, chairman of Bharti Enterprises Sunil Bharti Mittal said and added that bilateral agreements would have to be signed in each of the circles separately. It would also render the case related to interconnect currently in the Telecom Dispute Settlement and Appelate Tribunal (TDSAT) “infructuous”. However, the case related to the legality of WLL-M in basic telecom would remain in TDSAT. Cellular operators would continue to oppose the entry of WLL in basic telecom, Mr Mittal
added. To a query as to why cell operators blocked traffic of basic operators when ultimately they agreed to the ICU regime, Mr Virat Bhatia of AT and T said the TRAI had not informed them about the ICU regime when it served a show-cause notice to them on the interconnectivity issue. Earlier, speaking at the inaugural session of Supercomm India 2003, Mr Mahajan said, “the regulator may give a decision which will not satisfy all, it may even make a mistake, but you must be ready to accept it also”. He pointed out that if mobile operators did not agree to provide interconnection to CDMA-WLL as per the recent TRAI order, they “can always approach higher levels of authority - TDSAT and then the Supreme Court”. “We do not want to be partial to anyone. If they have problems, we shall address them”, the minister said. On the support to public sector telecom behemoths, the BSNL and the MTNL, he said the government did not want to protect them but they could not be allowed to perish as they gave employment to 4,00,000 persons.
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