Stung by the Cabinet's decision to unify licences for basic and cellular services, Cellular Operators' Association of India executive council is scheduled to meet on Thursday to discuss strategy and chart out future course of action for the industry.

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The meeting of COAI executive council would be crucial as it would also discuss the option of legal remedy in the wake of Cabinet's approval to unify licences as recommended by the group of ministers on telecom, sources told PTI in New Delhi.

The meeting of the executive council is expected to see presence of companies like Bharti, BPL, Spice and Idea among others, they said.

Cabinet last week decided to unify the basic and cellular telecom licences, paving the way for conversion of WLL services into fully mobile telecom services.

The decision was a major booster for Reliance, which currently has over five million WLL subscribers.

On the other hand, cellular operators led by Bharti and Hutchison, who were strongly opposing WLL services by basic operators and had taken legal recourse, were disappointed by the government decision and said it would tantamount to legalising the services of one of the WLL operators.

With the decision to unify licences, Reliance Infocomm would be required to pay about Rs 1,581 crore (Rs 15.81 billion) for migrating to a unified regime which includes Rs 1,096 crore (Rs 10.96 billion) towards migration fee and Rs 485 crore (Rs 4.85 billion) as penalty as recommended by Trai for offering cellular type fully mobile services.

After unification, requirement of additional spectrum for new services would be done on payment as per the guidelines from Trai.

COAI executive council is scheduled to meet a day before the association's appeal challenging TDSAT's order permitting WLL service to basic operators, is listed for hearing by Supreme Court on November 7.