DoT advanced cut-off date for mobile licence applications

The draft report of Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has observed that Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had arbitrarily announced changes in the cut-off date for receiving applications for new mobile licences.

In August 2007, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had recommended there should be no cap on the number of licences in any service area, which was accepted by DoT. But contrary to this, DoT put an artificial cap on the number of licensees and advanced the cut-off date to September 24, 2007 from October 1, 2007.

DoT’s reasoning was that seeing a spurt of applications, it had advanced cut-off date after keeping in mind the likely availability of spectrum, is unacceptable. Trai was not consulted on this matter nor the issue was placed before the Telecom Commission.