New Delhi,, November 11
Decks were cleared for establishing a unified licensing regime in the telecom sector with the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) today issuing detailed guidelines for services providers ( basic and cellular) to migrate to the new regime.
Under the new guidelines announced by the government today, GSM cellular operators will not have to pay any additional entry fee for migration to the new regime.
For basic service operators (BSOs), such as Reliance Infocomm, Tata Indicom, etc, the entry fee for migration to the unified access services licence (UASL) for a service area will be equal to the entry fee paid by the BSO itself, whichever is higher.
The service areas for the UASL will be as per the existing cellular mobile telephone service licences.
Basic service operators in Delhi, Haryana and UP (west) service areas, on migration to the new regime, will have service area as that of the cellular service providers of Delhi.
According to the guidelines issued by the DoT, while applying for migration to the UASL, the BSO will pay the difference between the entry fee for the UASL and the entry fee already paid by it.
Earlier, the Group of Ministers (GoM) on Telecom had recommended the acceptance of the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for migration of the basic and cellular service licences to the new regime.
The recommendations of the GoM were approved by the Union Cabinet on October 31.
Under the new guidelines, as explained in the addendum added by the DoT to the NTP 99,
existing operators will have an option to continue under the present terms and conditions or migrate to the UASL in the existing service areas with the existing allocated/contracted spectrum.
