After its recommendations on the Auction of Spectrum were questioned by the Telecom Commission, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India?s (TRAI) recommendations on Unified Licences are now under the scanner of a Department of Telecommunications (DoT) panel.
Prior to this, tower companies had expressed their concerns over these recommendations, on grounds that the growth of the infrastructure space would be aversely impacted.
For this space, the regulator had suggested lowering the foreign direct investment (FDI) cap from 100 per cent to 74 per cent and bringing these companies under the scope of the unified licence regime. These companies will have to shell out 8 per cent of revenue as the licence fee to bag the permit and have to have a minimum net worth and paid up equity capital of Rs 250 million to be eligible for a pan-India permit.
Now, a DoT panel has questioned three of the regulator?s recommendations, the three types of unified licences; lowering the FDI cap for tower companies from 100 per cent to 74 per cent and granting TRAI the authority to issue licences.
TRAI had recommended that unified licences be divided into three categories, national, circle and district. The DoT panel has objected to this, on grounds that the required administrative process for all these licences would be carried out at the circle level. This implies that operators holding a pan-India single unified licence would still be required to fulfill rollout obligations.
Secondly, the regulator?s suggestion to lowering the FDI cap for tower companies from 100 per cent to 74 per cent was vetoed by the panel, on grounds that it would impact the sector adversely.
Also, the panel felt that TRAI ought to continue functioning as a licensor.
