Telecom Commission to address six key policy issues today

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Commission (TC) is likely to finalise only about six key policy issues, related to new mobile licences that will be issued post the upcoming auctions, during its meeting on Friday, and will tackle other issues relating to unified licensing regime once the airwaves sale process is over.

The unified licensing issues likely to be finalised during Friday's meeting include rules for national level and service area level permits which will cost Rs 25 crore and Rs 2.5 crore, respectively, according to internal department documents reviewed by ET. The TC will defer framing guidelines for district level unified licence.

While the Telecom Commission is set to mandate that tower firms be brought under the unified licence regime, it will defer a decision on whether foreign direct investment in such companies should be lowered to bring it on a par with other telecom services, which are subject to a 74 per cent cap.

Currently, 100% foreign holdings is permitted in tower firms. According to internal DoT documents, the department’s apex body is also set to reject Trai’s suggestions for lowering the penalties for alleged violations in the new regime. The TC is set to retain the current norms of penalties of up to Rs 50 crore per violation.

The regulator, in its recommendations had differentiated between major and minor violations and proposed separate set of penalties for each category. The minimum penalty begins from Rs 10 lakh for a major violation and Rs 1 lakh for a minor breach of licence condition, going up to Rs 10 crore at the fifth violation and beyond. Similarly, the fifth minor licence breach and those following may be fined Rs 25 lakh each, Trai had said.

Again, while Trai had said that only revenues from mobile services be considered for revenue share calculations, the TC is likely to defer a decision on this during Friday’s meet. It is also likely to ask the department to obtain commitments from all successful winners in the upcoming auctions that they will migrate to the new licensing when the same is unveiled.