"I am pleased to announce that the cellular industry has agreed for termination of calls of basic players, even WLL services with immediate effect," Mahajan told reporters in New Delhi.

Asked what had prompted cellular operators to give such a commitment, Mahajan said that the operators had raised issues relating to level playing field which he has promised to look into.

Asked what had prompted MTNL to drag itself into the impasse, Mahajan said, "I have just returned from a week-long trip and I cannot say anything at this moment but I don't oppose what it (MTNL) did."

Mahajan, who held a 90-minute long meeting with the cellular industry to end the logjam over termination of calls from WLL-based limited mobility services to cellular players, said he would request telecom regulator TRAI to come up with regulations for a "just and fair" interconnect regime.

Interestingly, the same cellular industry represented by Sunil Mittal of Bharti Group, Virat Bhatia of AT&T and COAI president Rajeev Chandrashekhar, which had last week defied TRAI's directive to interconnect and termed TRAI's directiveas illegal, unjust and biased, on Monday agreed to interconnect with basic telecom players after the meeting.

Surprisingly, TRAI was saying the same thing to cellular players as Mahajan, which was not to snap links with other operators since regulations on interconnect user charge by TRAI would be announced soon.

However, the industry appeared to have listened to the minister and agreed to allow unblocking of termination of calls of basic operators including WLL mobile with immediate effect.

"They had raised issues relating to level playing field such as access charge and entry fee. As far as the issue of access charge is concerned, I have requested telecom regulator

TRAI to come out with a just and fair interconnect regime," he said expressing hope that it would come through in the next couple of days.