Supreme Court questions MERC authority on Enron dispute
New Delhi—The Supreme Court has stayed the proceedings before the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission on the Enron dispute, and has asked the high court to decide whether MERC has the jurisdiction to adjudicate the differences between the Maharashtra State Electricity Board and the Enron-sponsored Dabhol Power Company. In other words, the Supreme Court has asked the high court to decide whether or not Dabhol can take the dispute to the International Court of Arbitration in London.
Earlier, MSEB wanted the dispute over arbitration to be addressed by MERC which was upheld by the Mumbai High Court. Following this, DPC and later 11 of its international lenders filed a special leave petition with the Supreme Court, questioning the jurisdiction of MERC and pleaded that the sanctity of the arbitration agreement be upheld.
The Supreme Court apart from directing that the proceedings before the MERC be stayed has also directed that the interim orders be continued pending a decision by the high court over jurisdiction.
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DoT specifies licence terms for UMS providers
Mumbai—The department of telecommunication has made public the terms of the license under which unified messaging service providers will have to operate.
According to the new terms, any UMS provider will also have to get an ISP licence along with a license specifically for UMS.
The regulator has clubbed voice mail, audiotex and UMS into one category for which a licence will be issued and companies providing such services will have to state the geographical area to be covered under the service.
The norms also require the service provider define the service area (which it calls the short distance charging area or SDCA) within which it will offer its services. It is not clear if the SDCA applicable for UMS providers is the same as that of basic operators, which is usually equivalent to a district.
Apart from this, separate applications will be required for each service area, according to the new norms.
According to the new norms, UMS providers are not allowed to provide digital transmission services to any telecom service provider. In simple words, no interconnection or conversion of voice into data will be allowed in real time.
The norms also insist that a UMS provider will charge tariffs as specified by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India though Trai is yet to come out with any regulations for the pricing.
There is no specification of any entry fee or license fee however, a bank guarantee of Rs 3 lakh for each license will be required.
The guidelines also say that the licence should specify the interconnection details with MTNL, BSNL and the other licensed telecom service providers in the country.
The norms also insist that no bulk encryption equipment can be installed and that any such equipment installed at the service provider end will have to be approved by the DoT.
The new licence will also allow DoT to control content sent by subscribers of UMS providers. "Service providers will have to take measures to prevent an objectionable, obscene, unauthorised content, unlawful message infringing on copyrights, intellectual property in any form being carried on the network," the norms state.
The DoT also states that service providers should be capable of tracing the origin or content of any obnoxious or malicious messages or communication sent through their network.
UMS allows a subscriber to choose the mode in which to receive a message. For instance, a voice message sent over telephone lines can be converted into a text message and can then be delivered as an e-mail over the Internet or vice-versa.
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Gartner study predicts B2B transactions could cross $14 billion by 2004
New Delhi--Global consultancy firm Gartner predicts business to business (B2B) e-commerce transactions in India will cross $14 billion mark by 2004, while business to consumer (B2C) transactions will be around $520 million. Further, B2B revenues for the current year will be at $0.885 billion and B2C transaction volumes at $0.21 billion. Gartner also predicts the revenues from the fixed telephone services to be at $18.9 billion in 2005 from the $6.7 billion in 2000. Also telephone penetration in the country will increase to 7.7 per cent (82.9 million consumers) by 2005 which was at 3 per cent (32.25 million consumers) in 2000.
Gartner also points out that the number of users of mobile telephony services will increase to 31 million by 2005, thereby, generating about $5.1 billion of revenues from the present 3.1 million users generating revenues to the tune of $557 million.
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