Dot Unions Plan To Move Court Against Trai

The National Federation of Telecom Employees (NFTE) and the Federation of National Telecom Organisations (FNTO), the two main telecom union organisations, are gearing up for a legal battle, even as the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) review petition to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) comes up for hearing today.

The issue is the regulatory authoritys order to DoT to withdraw the high fixed-to-mobile tariffs that it had imposed for calling cellular phones.

O P Gupta, secretary-general of NFTE, in a note, said The telecom regulatory authority, as a judicious body, has given the decision based merely on technicalities of the law, declaring the telecom departments order as unilateral and arbitrary.

 

The note points out the unfairness of the order in view of the existing situation. It has, however, ignored the impact on the consumers as well as the DoT, says Gupta.

R Venkatraman, secretary-general of FNTO, said The tariff reduction will result in a Rs 2,000 crore per annum loss to the DoT.

This is the amount that DoT earns in STD revenues. DoT, forced by these losses will have to stop expanding its services into rural areas, he says.

Gupta argues that DoT revenues will be further reduced when PCO operators will misuse the cellular phones. They will utilise cellular channels for providing STD facilities to their customers, says the note, and warns They will charge customers on their own whim, cheating users in the process.

The unions are strongly in favour of the telecom department being separated from the government machinery in order to compete better in the liberalised environment.

The decision by the government not to appeal the telecom regulatory authority order was motivated by the governments own self-interest, say the unions.

This dispute was between the operator DoT and the private service providers, says Gupta. The TRAI itself should have insisted on a separation.

An independent DoT would have gone in appeal, but now the minister has decided not to do so to preserve the TRAIs image in the international market, the note says.

After the 1995 strike called by the unions, the Khan Committee was set up to look into the privatisation issue.

It had made specific recommendations to restructure DoT and separate it from the government.

However, the communications minister and the finance ministry are both reluctant to give up their control, says the note.