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Thomas K. Thomas

New Delhi, Aug. 11 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India wants the penalty on mobile operators for violating roll-out obligations to be eased out by doing away with the provision that allows the Government to cancel an operator’s licence.

This is likely to be suggested by TRAI in its recommendations related to roll out obligations and capping of mobile operators to be announced on August 17.

“Cancellation of licence does not serve any purpose. In fact it will only add to consumer’s problems as they will be stranded if an operator’s licence is cancelled. One also has to see the millions of dollars that the operators are investing in their network which will be wasted if a licence is terminated,” said a top TRAI official.

They also indicated that the requirement for getting certification from the Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC) for validating the roll out may be done away with.

Cancellation of licence was put in the licence conditions as a punitive measure to make sure that operators fulfilled their promises in the initial stage.

However, with more than 150 million mobile subscribers and a pan Indian coverage, such a measure could only lead to legal complications if the Government were to exercise it, said the Trai official.

Until now, the Department of Telecom has exercised this power only once in the case of Koshika where the company could not pay up the licence fee over a period of time. However, it has used the provision as threat in a number of show cause notices to operators in a bid to ensure compliance.

This was again discussed recently when DoT issued show cause notice to seven mobile operators for not fulfilling their roll-out obligations. The mobile operators are required to cover 90 per cent of every district in a circle in the first year of operation, including inside buildings.

Though DoT finally decided to impose monetary penalty of nearly Rs 400 crore on these operators, cancellation of licences was discussed as a possible measure to penalise the violation.

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Ease roll-out norms for mobile operators, says regulator

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