Cyrus Mistry meets Sibal over Trai proposals

Tata group Chairman-designate Cyrus Mistry and Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTSL) Managing Director N Srinath today met Communications and Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal to discuss the telecom regulator’s proposals on auction of 2G spectrum.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai)’s proposals, which suggested a base price of Rs 3,622.18 crore for one MHz of spectrum in the 1,800 MHz band, have drawn flak from all key players in the telecom industry.

The Trai-proposed base rate is 10 times the price paid by operators in 2008 to acquire pan-India licence, which came bundled with 4.4MHz of spectrum at Rs 1,658 crore.

Telecom Secretary R Chandrasekhar was also present at the meeting, which lasted for about 30 minutes. Both Mistry and Srinath refused to comments after the meeting. TTSL offers both GSM and CDMA-based mobile services.

In a recent interview with Business Standard, Srinath had said the main issue was of a level-playing field. “Structurally, imbalances in the industry have continued and imbalances have largely been around how spectrum has been distributed among different operators. The consequence is that we do not have a level-playing field,” he had said.

Tata, though, has supported Trai’s proposal on refarming of 900MHz spectrum held by GSM operators, while saying that high reserve price would scare away competition and might not give the best value of spectrum.

The Telecom Commission last week had left the decision on pricing to the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM), which will meet on June 5.