By
OUR CORRESPONDENT
Last week, the telecom
department allowed cross-over technology under which an operator can offer both
CDMA and GSM based mobile services with the same licence
after paying the entry fee of a Unified (Telecom) Access Services licence.
"We look forward to a
level playing field in the industry and await clarity on all aspects of this
new announcement from the authorities," a Tata Teleservices spokesperson said.
Reliance Communications has
been given a letter of intent to start a nation wide GSM service and the
company has already paid Rs 1,651 cro-res
to the telecom department towards the fee.
Reliance Communications is a
major CDMA player offering services in 21 of the country’s 23 telecom zones.
While it is also offering GSM services under a different licence
given to its sister concern Reliance Telecom, for Tatas
it will be a foray into GSM technology.
The other two companies to
have received the approval along with Reliance are HFCL and Shyam
Telecom. The centre has decided that public sector telecom companies BSNL and
MTNL being incumbent operators will be permitted usage of alternative
technology and allocated spectrum without paying the prescribed fee.
Meanwhile, in a separate
development, GSM group’s Cellular Operators Association of India’s director general T.V. Ramachandran
confirmed to this newspaper that the Association on Tuesday will challenge in
the telecom disputes settlement and appellate tribunal (TDSAT) the telecom
department’s new telecom policy that allows CDMA service providers entry into
the GSM segment.
"It is submitted that any
earlier applications for crossover when the same was not permissible are
invalid, infructuous ab-initio
and nonest. Even if cro-ssover
allotment of spectrum were to be permitted, such invalid applications cannot be
converted into valid applications," COAI had said in a letter to telecom
secretary D.S. Mathur.
"We were greatly
disturbed to hear the government has issued a letter to a large CDMA operator
(a reference towards Reliance Communication) permitting the company to hold a
crossover allocation of spectrum and that too, with retrospective effect, by legitimising an application that the company had
purportedly made in February 2006, when such crossover allocation was clearly
impermissible," said COAI. The Association has also accused the telecom
department of acting with malafide intentions to favour a particular CDMA operator (RCom).
Source: The Asian Age