Cabinet clears unified licence Telecom Policy
By Our Economy Bureau | 01 Nov 2003
New Delhi: The unified licensing regime as recommended by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) got its final stamp of approval from the Union Cabinet yesterday. The decision to hike the foreign investment limit to 74 per cent has been left to the Finance Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, as part of the annual budgetary exercise.
With
this, Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservcies can convert
their existing basic licences to a unified licence by
paying the prescribed entry fees, which will enable them
to offer fully mobile services to their limited mobility
(WLL) subscribers. While Reliance will have to pay a total
of Rs 1,581 crore (including an entry fee of Rs 1,09 crore
and a penalty of Rs 485 crore) the Tatas will have to
shell out Rs 545 crore in order to convert their basic
licences to the unified licences. Cellular operators,
on the other hand, do not have to pay any entry fees for
this migration.
Briefing
newspersons after the meeting the Union Communications
Minister, Mr Arun Shourie, noted that while all the proposals
that had been cleared by the Group of Ministers on Telecom,
which was set up to resolve the contentious issues have
been given their approval by the Cabinet, it was felt
that any hike in the foreign investment limit can be taken
up as part of the Union Budget for 2004-05. More so since
it is a policy issue, which involves attracting more investment
into the country.