Will approach Trai to keep call drop order in abeyance: COAI

GSM industry body COAI will approach sectoral regulator Trai to keep the order on call drop compensation in abeyance till March 10, when the Supreme Court will hear the matter.
Supreme Court today declined any interim relief to telecom companies against the Delhi High Court's order upholding Trai's decision making it mandatory for them to compensate subscribers for call drops from January 1, 2016.
"It's a question of interim order. We will hear it on Thursday (March 10). As of now, no interim order," a bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and Rohinton Fali Nariman said.
"COAI will approach Trai to request that implementation by the industry be kept in abeyance until the Supreme Court hears and decides on the matter until March 10, 2016," COAI said in a statement.

The statement added the Indian mobile telephony services industry, represented by COAI, appreciates Supreme Court's decision to hear the petition challenging the regulation issued by Trai on October 16, 2015 and against the ruling of the High Court of Delhi on the regulation.
The telecom operators had moved the high court seeking quashing of Trai's regulation contending that it was a "knee-jerk reaction" which penalised them without proving any wrong-doing.

COAI said the imposition of service tax will increase the
cost of spectrum acquisition in the upcoming auctions by 47 per cent to 71 per cent, thus putting a dampener on auction results, auction proceeds and acquisition of spectrum.

"In the interest of the nation and consumers we request that the proposed service tax on spectrum allotments be restricted to only transactions involving spectrum trading between private operators," COAI said.
The industry body said assignment of spectrum is a sovereign function of the government which enables provision of telecom services which is a designated essential service.
"Imposition of tax on sovereign functions creates tax cascading impact which is detrimental to the health of industry and decreases the investable corpus as well," it added.
COAI further said service tax on spectrum assignment will impose additional stress on debt laden industry (telecom industry's estimated debt stood at Rs 3.50 lakh crore in FY15).

"We hope that due consideration would be given to above recommendations of the telecom industry and appropriate amendments would be made," it added.