Private National Long Distance Operators, Reliance Infocomm, Tata-owned VSNL and Bharti Televentures have sought a compensation of Rs 2,805 crore (Rs 28.05 billion) from the government in the wake of its decision to usher in a new regime for issuing NLD licences.
Seeking a compensation of Rs 935 crore (Rs 9.35 billion) each, the three players have said the Department of Telecommunication proposal to relax entry barriers, roll-out obligations and annual licence fee for new entrants would deprive them the present level playing field.
The companies also contend that if the new policy was to be in place, the present obligation of extending the network to all long distance calling areas should be waived. As the government had collected bank guarantees of Rs 400 crore (Rs 4 billion) from each of the three companies towards the roll-out obligations, the same should also be returned.
The total compensation per player would then be Rs 1,335 crore (Rs 13.35 billion).
DoT officials said the ministry had received the joint letter from the three companies. Dayanidhi Maran, the Union Minister for Communications and IT, was briefed on the subject today, though a decision was yet to be taken, the officials added.
The government is considering a new NLD policy to facilitate entry of new players to promote competition. The new policy proposes reducing license fee to Rs 625 crore (Rs 6.25 billion) from Rs 2,500 crore (Rs 25 billion), entry fee to Rs 25 crore (Rs 250 million) from Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) and fixing the revenue share license fee at 6 per cent from the existing 15 per cent.
The new regime is also likely to waive the performance bank guarantee of Rs 400 crore and roll out obligations.
A similar situation of players seeking compensation had arisen earlier when DoT allowed WLL-based limited mobility service operators to provide full-fledged mobility, the letter from the operators said. The government had then reduced the licence fee for the existing cellular operators.
It also collected the differential licence fee from basic operators before allowing them to migrate to unified licence in addition to granting cellular operators a two per cent reduction in their licence fee for a period of four years from 1 April, 2004.
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