States favour uniform telecom network roll-out policy

A majority of states have agreed in-principle on a uniform policy for rolling out telecom infrastructure across the country, which will help improve the turnaround time in laying networks and lower its cost.
According to sources, all states except Andhra Pradesh, Assam and Kerala, participated in a meeting called by the Department of Telecom (DoT) and chaired by Telecom Secretary J S Deepak over a uniform policy for rolling out telecom infrastructure.
The proposed policy, if finalised, will help expeditious roll out of telecom infrastructure as well as improve quality of service, reduce call drops as well as cost of setting up networks.

"Assam and Kerala could not participate because of elections in the state. All states have agreed to a uniform rule for Right of Way permission on government land and premises specially in a time bound manner," an official who attended the meet told PTI.
The DoT has written to the states and various central government ministries and departments proposing new rules that would be applicable uniformly across the country and sought their comments by April 20.
The delay in providing Right of Way (RoW) permissions and the high RoW charges impedes the development of telecom infrastructure. RoW permission is required for rolling out telecom infrastructure like laying telecom cable network both underground and overground, installing mobile towers etc.

The new rules proposes that authorities involve in granting RoW permit will have to grant permission within 60 days should decide on the application. In case of rejection of the application, the concerned authority should record reason in writing, as per the proposal.

Telecom companies often blame local authorities in the states for creating unnecessary hurdles in roll-out of telecom infrastructure, specially in granting RoW permission.
Most of the complaints have been made regarding abnormally high price for RoW as well as different levies or fee imposed by various authorities other than charges prescribed under telecom licences. In some cases, the charges have been as high as Rs 7 crore per kilometre for laying underground cables.

"Some states felt that they should be paid for use of the government land but they were informed that since telecom is a critical infrastructure there should be no levy for using government's land and premises except reinstatement charges," the official said.
The states, however, will be free to make their own rules in case of use of private property, the official said.
Idea, which is in talks with rival Vodafone for a merger,
said it was "forced to reduce" its voice rates on sequential quarterly basis by 10.6 per cent to 29.6 paise per minute from 33.1 paise in the July-September 2016 and drop in mobile data rates by 15.2 per cent to 15.9 paise per megabyte compared to 18.7 paise.

"Despite an unprecedented outgoing voice rate fall, the lure of free offerings resulted in lower than normal volume elasticity with the quarterly sequential voice minutes growing only by 7.3 per cent to 210 billion minutes (compared to 195.5 billion minutes in second quarter of 2016-17), that too led by double digit growth in incoming call volume," Idea said.
Also, the higher blended voice realisation rate fall was also an outcome of the "tsunami of minutes" terminating on Idea's network from the new operator, resulting in overall higher ratio of subsidised incoming minutes recovered at below cost IUC settlement rates.
Idea, for the first time, witnessed a decline of 5.5 million mobile data customers on sequential quarter basis with overall mobile data subscriber (2G,3G and 4G) base receding to 48.6 million from 54.1 million in second quarter of 2016-17.

Its net debt stood at Rs 49,140 crore at the end of December 2016, including a larger proportion of this debt from DoT under 'Deferred payment obligation' for spectrum acquired in last four spectrum auctions.
Idea's capital expenditure was Rs 2,000 crore, excluding forex and interest capitalisation, in the reported quarter, partially funded by cash profit of Rs 1,230 crore.
RComm too reported decline of 10.5 per cent in revenue realisation from voice calls despite minutes of usage going up on its network by 4.3 per cent to 102.1 billion minutes compared with the previous quarter.
RComm reported a decline of 0.6 per cent average revenue per user to Rs 154 and drop of 10 per cent in data traffic on its network as against the previous quarter.