DoT writes to Trai on UAS licence dilemma

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has asked the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to give its recommendation on a contentious issue: whether new operators, which successfully win the 3G auction bid, would be given the Unified Access Service Licence (UASL) immediately, or whether they have to wait along with more than 343 applicants for a similar purpose.

These applicants have been waiting for the UAS licence for the last two years, because DoT does not have enough spectrum available.

A decision on this issue is important because new operators would shy away from bidding for a standalone 3G licence if they are made to wait for years to get the UAS licence even though they have won bids for 3G. That would make the 3G project unviable from the very beginning.

“Trai has to look into the issue of whether the pending applicants have any vested legal rights with respect to successful 3G bidders,” a senior official in the communications and IT ministry told Business Standard. DoT would take a call on this issue only after the views of Trai.

At present, there are 343 pending applications for the UAS licence, including that of real estate firm DLF, global telecom player AT&T, Moser Baer and Ispat. These applications had come between September 25, 2007, and October 1, 2007.

Some 46 companies had applied for telecom licences, of which 24 applied between September 25 and October 1, 2007. The government has not accepted any fresh applications for telecom licences after October 1, 2007. However, in January 2008, it had allotted about 120 new licences to nine companies which had applied before September 25, 2007. Some of the new licensees, including Unitech Wireless, Sistema Shyam, Datacom and STel, are yet to start their mobile operations.

The 3G auction, which was expected to complete by the end of this year, is now slated to happen by the end of the current fiscal, according to Communications Minister A Raja.