COAI opposes cancellation of operators’ licences

Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), has come out against telecom regulator TRAI's suggestion for cancellation of 62 licences to five companies including  Etisalat (Swan), Uninor and Videocon for not meeting the rollout obligations.

The telecom operators' representative body argues that the companies failed to roll out plans due to spectrum shortage.

Rajan Mathews, director general, COAI, said the operators had failed to meet their rollout obligations due to many reasons, including shortage of spectrum as also government restrictions on telecom equipment import.

In response to a question whether allotment of additional spectrum was the cause of unavailability of spectrum to others, Mathews said the DOT itself had not accepted the TRAI report.

He added the DOT would conduct and independent study as to whether the coverage was appropriate or not. He said he did not know how many operators and in how many circle operations had been impacted, but it was certainly one reason why some operators could not roll out services.

Explaining about the import of telecom equipment he said there were two things the telecom policy allowed as far as import of equipment was concerned- self ratification and a unified template agreement.