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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: foundation who wrote (31981)	2/2/2003 10:02:49 AM
From: foundation	Respond to of 197227

Field tilted in favour of cellcos: Reliance PTI [ SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 02, 2003 06:13:07 PM ] MUMBAI: Pooh-poohing the demands of cellular operators for a level playing field, Reliance on Sunday said that they were already in an advantageous position in the fast growing domestic telecom sector. "Field is already tilted in favour of cellular companies," Manoj Modi, executive director of Reliance Infocomm, the single largest basic telecom service provider, said making light of Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) in their fight against limited mobile WLL service providers. "The cellular license fee (revenue sharing) has been brought at par with the basic operators but the stringent roll-out obligations imposed on basic service operators are not applicable to the cellular companies making the playing field highly uneven," Modi said in an interview. The basic operator is required to cover the entire circle and establish a Point of Presence (PoP) in each Short Distance Charging Area (SDCA), whereas the cellular operators are not required to go beyond 50 per cent of coverage of district headquarters which are urban areas, he said while pointing out stringent roll-out obligations of basic operators in rural areas including village public telephones (VPTs). On top of this, the new tariff regime by the telecom regulator Trai has tilted the field further in their favour by imposing access charges to be paid by basic operators to the cellular operators thereby making the basic services costlier, Modi said. "This is nothing but the introduction of calling party pays (CPP) regime despite the fact that all expert groups and consumer organizations have opposed it," he added. The cellular operators would now be offering free Incoming calls but at the cost of basic phone users, who would be paying more for reaching to them. In other words, the additional money paid by basic users would now subsidise cell operators. Reliance Infocomm has licence for offering basic telecom services in 18 states across the country and is likely to start offering WLL- based limited mobility services shortly. As far as the entry fee is concerned, there has been a myth about it, Reliance Infocomm alone has paid Rs 600 crore in cash and a bank guarantee of Rs 2,400 crore whereas the total licence fee paid by all the cellular operators, as claimed by them, stands at Rs 9,000 crore, Modi said. "But as far as level playing field is concerned, they (cellular operators) have no roll-out obligations vis-a-vis severe roll-out including rural and semi-urban for basic service providers. Cellular operators have unlimited mobility whereas we have only limited mobility. Cell companies get spectrum of 10 Mhz against a maximum of 5 Mhz for basic service providers while both types of operators pay two per cent of their gross revenue towards spectrum charges," Modi said. "Moreover, there are disparities even within the same service. The first two cellular licenses were given virtually free of cost as they were migrated to revenue sharing regime from fixed license fee. Third licence was offered to state-owned PSUs - MTNL and BSNL - while there was bidding for the fourth licence," Modi said. Newly-appointed Communications Minister Arun Shourie, immediately after assuming charge, had also mentioned the issue of waiver of licence fee committed by the cellular operators saying that no commitments, either by the private players made at the time of procuring license or by PSU, should be written off without severe penalties. Modi said the same operators, which opposed the CPP regime in other countries as they are in basic telecom operators, have been advocating this to get undue benefits at the cost of basic users and this has been given to them by Trai on January 25 in their Telecom Tariff Order. economictimes.indiatimes.com