Tatas may pull out of apex tele body

The Tata group telecom companies have threatened to pull out of the apex advisory council for telecom in India. The bone of contention is verification of subscriber base and selling of pre-activated SIM cards.

Following the serial bomb blasts in Mumbai, the council (ACT) has asked all telecom service providers to verify 10 per cent of their total subscriber base.

However, the Tata group firms "" Tata Teleservices Ltd and Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) "" are in favour of a 100-per cent verification.

The Tata firms have informed the association that this is an issue of national security and will "take considerable time and money," but the industry has no choice except to commit to full verification.

The group has also sought a curb on the sales of pre-activated SIM cards. However, the association is reportedly not in favour of this, industry sources told Business Standard. Officials of the Tata group as well as the ACT declined to comment on the issue.

The ACT was not ready to advise its members either on 100-per cent verification or on stopping pre-activated SIM card sales, stating that its subscriber base was much higher than that of the Tatas and verification could only be carried out over a period of time.

There are around 80 million GSM customers and 26 million CDMA customers. Of these, the Tatas service over five million mobile subscribers.

The Tata companies have informed the ACT that the industry has no choice except to commit to the government that it will do everything necessary to complete the required verification of subscriber base, for both pre and post-paid connections.

The group has also asked the ACT to "rethink" the issue. If it does not, the Tatas will surrender their membership with the association. The verification issue came to the fore after the recent bomb blasts in Mumbai, which prompted the department of telecommunications (DoT) to send a notice on July 14 to all operators.

The ACT is an industrial association that was jointly formed by the Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (Auspi) and the Cellular Operators' Association of India (COAI), which are apex bodies of CDMA and GSM service providers, respectively.