Work under telcos 100-day action plan satisfactory: Manoj Sinha

NEW DELHI: Telecom minister Manoj Sinha has expressed satisfaction over the progress made by telecom operators under the ongoing ‘100-day action plan’ and assured them that the telecom department will look into rationalization of various levies.

Top telecom executives, including Bharti Airtel’s Gopal Vittal, Vodafone India’s Sunil Sood and Idea Cellular’s Himanshu Kapania, together with lobby groups Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and Association of Unified Service Providers Association of India (AUSPI) met Sinha to discuss some of the pertinent issues including ‘financial health’ of the industry ahead of upcoming mega auction.

“We have discussed 2-3 important aspects and have mutually agreed to work together. They (telcos) assured to undertake technology upgradation in next 1 year,” Sinha told reporters soon after a closed-door discussion with top operators.

Sinha said the ongoing work under the ‘100-day action plan’ was satisfactory and added that consumer satisfaction is necessary in the area of call drops and data network is equally important, otherwise it could create difficulty in achieving ‘Digital India’ targets.

In June, service providers had come out with a 100-day comprehensive plan to invest at least Rs 12,000 crore and put of as many as 60,000 new mobile towers in areas where network coverage remains poor in the country.

The department has cleared various policies including spectrum sharing and trading guidelines and is looking into rationalization of various levies in future, he added.

The sector has added 48,000 new mobile towers as a part of their 100-day action plan till date, and there have been a significant improvement in the call drops in the country, according to telecom operators.

Meanwhile, telcos led by COAI, demanded license fee and spectrum usage charge (SUC) to be brought down ahead of the September airwaves sale, which is aimed to increase spectrum holding among operators.

“As the spectrum is being made available in almost all bands to mitigate scarcity, the industry wants the government to bring down license fee and spectrum usage charges,” COAI director general Rajan S Mathews said.

He, however, added that the government has not yet assured on flat SUC levy as suggested by regulator Trai.

The industry, according to Mathews, highlighted critical areas such as right-of-way (RoW) challenges, deteriorating financial health, GST and net neutrality.