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Our Bureau

New Delhi , Nov. 11

MAKING a pitch for preservation of `no worse off norm', telecom major Bharti today said it would take up the issue of level-playing field vis-a-vis new players following the Government's decision to cut entry free for the NLD and ILD segments.

The company also said the long distance charges were unlikely to see a significant drop as a direct result of yesterday's announcement. The actual drop would come once the access deficit charge is levied as a percentage of annual gross revenue instead of a per minute basis.

"As for specific NLD tariff reduction following the licence fee cut, the answer is No. There is no major impact... We can only pass the benefit on what we save and since we get a carriage charge of less than 50 paise, the cut envisages only a 8-9 per cent savings in cost and passing a component of this would result in a very small amount of call rate drop," Mr Akhil Gupta, Joint Managing Director and Group CFO, Bharti, said.

"While the existing players cannot seek immunity from competition, we should be in a no worse off position. But we will have to see the fine print of the announcement," he added.

Bharti contends that it paid a higher sum for entering the NLD market, and, hence, the Government should look at returning the differential of unexpired portion of the licence fee paid by existing NLD operators.

Existing players such as Bharti, Reliance and Tata had paid over Rs 1,500 crore as entry fee for the long distance licence. Earlier, these three players had asked for about Rs 2,800 crore compensation from the Government in case licence fee is cut.

Bharti had yesterday lauded Government's decision to reduce entry fee for national (NLD) and international long distance (ILD) players to a uniform Rs 2.5 crore from the existing Rs 100 crore and Rs 25 crore respectively, even as it cut the revenue share to 6 per cent from the existing 15 per cent. Minister for Communications and IT Mr Dayanidhi Maran had said that it would trigger off at least nine per cent drop in the long distance call charges.

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Entry fee for NLD, ILD segments — Bharti seeks `level-playing field' vis-a-vis new players

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