India Sets Up Panel On Telecom Operators' Concerns Over Regulator Proposals

NEW DELHI (Dow Jones)--The Indian government Wednesday said it has set up a panel to consider the concerns of telecom companies over recommended caps on bandwidth for mobile phone services and a proposed one-time charge. The panel--which will be within the Department of Telecommunications--is to be headed by a member for technology at the Telecom Commission, the highest decision-making body within the DoT, a government statement said. The decision to refer the telecom companies' concerns over the proposals to a panel comes after the federal communications minister, Andimuthu Raja, met the heads of Indian telecommunication companies to hear their views earlier Wednesday. "The concerns expressed by operators were minuted and it will have due reflections after due deliberations in the (telecom) ministry and the Telecom Commission," Raja told reporters after the meeting. In May, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, or TRAI, recommended that GSM and CDMA operators with more than 6.2 megahertz and 5 Mhz of 2G bandwidth, respectively, should pay a one-time fee to keep the excess spectrum. It said the fee would be linked to the value of third-generation, or 3G, bandwidth at the government's recent auction. Top telecom companies, including Bharti Airtel Ltd. (532454.BY), Vodafone Essar Ltd. and Idea Cellular Ltd. (532822.BY), strongly opposed the recommendations as they had already spent large sums in the 3G and broadband wireless spectrum auctions. Bids for 3G bandwidth were much higher than the companies initially paid for bandwidth to offer 2G services and the operators felt the fee would hurt their financials in a highly competitive market with falling phone call rates. "Various issues on licences, spectrum, allocation, charging of spectrum and roll-out obligations, merger and acquisitions and other related issues were discussed in the meeting and it has been decided that the Internal Committee will finalize the views and refer to Telecom Commission," the government statement said. After it made the recommendations, TRAI asked telecom companies for their views by June 15 and said it would also consult with other experts--a process it estimated would be completed by July 15. The government earlier said it would consider the views of all operators before making a decision on the TRAI proposals. -By R. Jai Krishna, Dow Jones Newswires, +91.11.4356.3333; krishna.jai@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires July 07, 2010 06:38 ET (10:38 GMT)