The telecom tribunal TDSAT on Wednesday asked new operators S Tel and Videocon Teleservices to pay 60 per cent of the penalty within two weeks, imposed on them by the Department of Telecom for failing to meet their roll-out obligations.
S Tel, a joint venture between Chennai-based Siva Group and Bahrain Telecom (Batelco), has been directed to immediately stop its mobile services in Himachal Pradesh, Bihar and Orissa, citing national security concerns.
Telecom company S Tel Ltd has more than doubled the offer of revenues to the government for licences in all 22 circles in the country which it has applied for, adding a new twist to the spectrum controversy.
A bench of justices G S Singhvi and A G Ganguly asked the CBI to apprise it of their findings on March 15.
Idea takes the matter back to Supreme Court as cancellation-hit telcos make decisive moves.
The average revenue per user (ARPU) of the country's four new GSM operators who got licences in 2008 - Uninor, S-Tel, Videocon and Etisalat DB - was between Rs 8.50 and Rs 39 in the January-March quarter.
A common carrier policy, as in the petroleum sector, is worth looking at.
The Department of Telecom has worked out a one-time spectrum charge of over Rs 2,060 crore to be levied from operators for the period they remained in business after their licences were cancelled in February last year, sources said.
Though Indians were no strangers to scams, spectrum loss was beyond their wildest imagination.
Govt petition separated from others, to be heard in open court on Apr 13
The company operates in 21 circles. Mumbai will be in exception, which has a separate licence.
The policy is also pushing for a one-country-one-licence regime, which means removal of roaming charges.
Radia, chairperson of Vaishnavi Corporate Communications and Tata, chairman of Tata sons Limited, have been asked by the PAC to appear before it on April 5 at 11 AM and 3 PM respectively to give 'oral evidence' on the subject 'recent developments in the telecom sector including allocation of 2G and 3G spectrum'.
New telecom operators who have been given licences to operate pan-India GSM mobile services are all set to fight a bitter battle with the established GSM players like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular.
A consummate deal-maker, the former Aircel boss raked in the moolah in many, but lost a packet in several others.
The Department of Telecom may bar operators holding 3G airwaves from sharing the high-speed spectrum.
The Supreme Court in February, 2012 had quashed 122 2G licences.
'At least three top bureaucrats have been declared guilty in recent years in connection with scams where they had no pecuniary benefit.' 'But in the telecom case, a money trail is declared irrelevant because no scam has been proved in the first place.' 'Fair enough; so we must punish illegality without criminality, but ignore possible criminality as suggestive of illegality,' points out T N Ninan.
The telephone subscriber base was 996.49 million at the end of March.
The fear of another scam pushed the government into a rather long period of so-called 'policy paralysis'. To play it safe, the price of spectrum in all subsequent auctions was benchmarked to the high 3G rates, says Surajeet Das Gupta.
For 2100-MHz, 2300-MHz and 2500-MHz bands across circles; aim to offer these with 3G and 4G in February
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