Department of Telecommunications to declare 3G roaming pacts illegal

MUMBAI | NEW DELHI: The Department of Telecommunications is set to declare third generation, or 3G, roaming agreements between telecom operators illegal on the ground that they breach licence conditions, dealing a setback to operators such Airtel, Idea and Vodafone, which have been banking upon such services to turn around stagnant revenues per subscriber.

“The determination was that these agreements were not permissible under the existing rules and regulations (licence conditions), under the rules of the auction and extant procedures,” DoT secretary R Chandrasekhar said.

The DoT’s action comes despite vigorous opposition from industry bigwigs such as Sunil Mittal, the promoter of Airtel. Kumar Mangalam Birla, Idea’s owner, and Vittorio Colao, the world-wide boss of Vodafone, who met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last month to plead for a stable policy regime. In that meeting they strongly protested DoT’s move to disallow 3G roaming on the ground that it was part of the policy framework agreed by DoT at the time of bidding.

None of the private Indian telecom operators was able to secure an all-India 3G licence from which they cumulatively paid Rs 51,000 crore. They were banking on using each other’s network to plug in the gaps in network.

The DoT has said companies cannot offer 3G to subscriber in service areas where they do not have licence. Such services are also called intra-circle roaming services. Therefore, Bharti Airtel, India’s largest telecom operator by subscribers cannot offer 3G services to its customers outside the 13 service areas where it has 3G spectrum.