The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is considering shifting to a unified licence regime under the New Telecom Policy 2011. It is believed that the new policy may permit operators to offer all forms of communication services under a single permit. Currently, telecom firms require separate licences for each type of service.
Moreover, it is believed that the new policy will delink spectrum from the licence and the unified licence will be spectrum neutral and will not specify what service the airwaves must be used for.
This spectrum-neutral permit could benefit companies limited by licence conditions to offer data services, besides companies who won the broadband wireless access (BWA) auction held last year.
These include Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and Qualcomm. In 2010, RIL acquired 95 per cent stake in Infotel Broadband Services for Rs 48 billion after the company won BWA spectrum. Infotel also won a pan-India licence for nearly Rs 130 billion.
Similarly, Qualcomm holds BWA spectrum for four circles, Tikona Digital Networks in five and Augere (Mauritius) Limited in one circle.
None of the BWA winners have launched commercial services yet. RIL, which is expected to launch data services by end-2011, said that it was in the process of finalising arrangements with various global technology players, operators, infrastructure providers, application developers, device manufacturers and others to facilitate the launch of 4G in India.
