Vodafone moves Delhi High Court for licence renewal

NEW DELHI: Vodafone India has filed a petition in the Delhi High Court challenging the telecom department's refusal last month to renew its licences for the Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata circles.

Vodafone has around 24 Mhz of spectrum in these three circles for which licences were given in 1994 for a period of 20 years. These licences expire in November 2014.

"The DoT ( department of telecom) arbitrarily rejected Vodafone's applications for extension without due consideration of the substantive points raised there in," the Indian arm of UK-based Vodafone Plc said in a statement on Thursday.

"Accordingly, Vodafone is constrained to take the legal recourse by challenging DoT's arbitrary rejection of its extension applications, as this matter can potentially cause grave inconvenience to millions of customers."

The mobile phone company added that extension of these licences was allowed under existing norms.

In December, Vodafone had sought an extension of its licences in the three metro circles in the 900 Mhz band, citing Clause 4.1 of the licence agreement under which the government can extend the period of licence by 10 years at a time if the request is made by the operator during the 19th year of the licence period.

Vodafone's statement said that DoT had communicated to the company that the validity of existing mobile licences may be extended for another 10 years at one time, as per the provisions of the extant licensing regime with suitable terms and conditions. "Thus, the decision to extend licences has already been taken by DoT and it is only the terms and conditions of extension that are to be decided," it said.