Department of Telecom defends easing of norm for broadband players - Times of India

NEW DELHI: The Department of Telecom (DoT) has defended the migration of internet service provider (ISP) licence holders to the unified licence (UL) regime under which they can provide voice telephony after paying a fee. "Broadband wireless access (BWA) came with no inherent limitation to providing voice service," telecom secretary R Chandrashekhar said on Thursday. The DoT report on UL says, "An existing ISP licencee, on becoming successful bidder, had the option to apply and obtain a unified access services (UAS) licence against BWA auction within three months of the completion of the auction." While UAS licence permits voice services and mobility, the ISP licence does not provide for mobile voice services. The entry fee for pan-India UAS licence was Rs 1,658 crore and the fee for ISP l icence was Rs 30 lakh. The DoT committee on UL therefore decided that there is no bar on migration of ISP with BWA spectrum to UL regime. But it said the same will be allowed after paying the difference between the entry fee for UAS and ISP licences apart from the entry fee for migration of ISP licencee to UL. Chandrashekhar's clarification comes on the heels of Cellular Operators Association of India's (COAI's) representation to the department in which the latter had opposed the government's decision to allow the migration of ISP with BWA spectrum to UL regime. Meanwhile, Reliance Jio, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries, said in a letter to the DoT secretary that voice service was always allowed using BWA spectrum, provided one holds the relevant licence. Reliance in its letter said that the recent developments in the telecom sector have led to the exit of some serious new operators, who had given tough competition to the incumbents and had b rought down the tariffs considerably. "The exit of competition from the cellular market has been exploited by the incumbents to increase tariffs arbitrarily to the huge disadvantage of the customers," Reliance wrote. Reliance further pointed out that the incumbent cellular operators fear that implementation of the UL regime will deprive them of their monopoly over the mobile voice market and, therefore, it is now opposing the very implementation of such a regime and other "pro-consumer policies of the government" like One Nation - One Licence, One Nation - Free Roaming. via Technology - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNHwq0vXPzYFD_a1MIyQ00L2-pGvWw&url=http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/telecom/Department-of-Telecom-defends-easing-of-norm-for-broadband-players/articleshow/18855580.cms

Put the internet to work for you. via Personal Recipe 2598265