India Telecom

February 15, 2003
Shourie challenges industry to resolve its contradictions

Rajendra Prabhu

NEW DELHI -- Arun Shourie, fresh on the driver's seat at Electronic Niketan, listened to the telecom industry leaders for over seven hours at a stretch and then asked the industry itself to resolve its contradictions through a small committee. The major issue to be resolved is the dispute over WLL that the cellular operators have raised.

At the end of the long, grilling session, the Minister's move to give the industry the first chance to resolve its own contradictions indicated the government's new attitude toward the tangled telecom sector. The industry must increasingly take up self-regulation and not throw the responsibility on third parties, including the government. The committee formed to resolve the issues has a two-week deadline. However, the Minister himself has indicated that this deadline is flexible. That means the government would not like the ball coming back to its court.

Shourie has left no one in doubt that the government is thinking increasingly in terms of a single convergent license with the licensee deciding for himself what segment he would like to serve. That brings the market forces to the fore in the selection of services, instead of the current practice where the government takes the decision on different sectoral targets such as basic, cellular, other wireless services etc. The Minister is among those in the government who believe that it is not the business of the government to do business.

The issues that the committee would deal with are to be defined specifically. That would be the first task when it meets coming Monday, February 17. It would deal with the implementation of restrictions on the WLL service so that it may not be a parallel service to cell phones, the problems of ensuring a level-playing field between basic and cellular operators on the former's wireless service and define what should be the competition rules for the industry to avoid predatory behavior.

The participants included the prominent operators in the cellular arena, such as Sunil Bharti Mittal (AirTel), Virat Bhatia (Idea), Rajeev Chandrashekhar (BPL and president of COAI), as well as in the basic services, such as S. Ramakrishanan (Tata Teleservices and president of ABTO), Mukesh Ambani (Reliance Infocomm), Prithipal Singh and S.D. Saxena (BSNL), Sidharth Ray (Data Access and president of ISPAI), among others.

The committee has Mukesh Ambani, Sunil Mittal, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, S. Ramakrishnan, Telecom Secretary Vinod Vaish and BSNL CMD Prithipal Singh. The telecom industry entrepreneurs appeared pleased with the Minister's openness and approach, with the Reliance chairman terming the event "historical." Ambani commented on the outcome, "I am optimistic that the sector will not only help add huge value to the Indian public, but also help India find a place in the world." On the committee's task he said "partnership will deliver value."

Regarding the charge that Reliance Infocomm's WLL service was offering roaming service against the terms of the basic service license, Ambani clarified: "Reliance is committed to stick to license conditions. Our services are limited mobility and what we have is multiple registration system that is different from roaming." On this, Bharti's Sunil Mittal said, "We will like to understand the system as explained by Ambani before taking a decision."

Despite lot of bonhomie within the telecom industry, doubts still persisted at the end of the meeting. One sharp view was that the government was throwing the problem created by its licensing faults on to the industry. The cell operators feel that had the government, from the beginning, restricted wireless services by the basic operators, only to facilitate quick provision of basic telephone lines without allowing them to provide mobile services, there would have been no problem. So long as the basic operators feel that they have obtained an additional advantage in being allowed mobile services, there would be no resolution of the telephone tangle. Those who hold this view are not very optimistic about the outcome of the committee's deliberations.

The Minister said that he was not insisting on the operators' withdrawing their plaint before the TDSAT on the WLL issue. "Both the seeking of the legal remedy and of an intra-industry resolution could go on simultaneously" he remarked.