Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited?s (BSNL) employee association has requested a probe against the incumbent for allegedly allowing roaming services to new operators, including Unitech and Swan Telecom on its network, according to news reports.
In a written correspondence to Minister of Telecommunications and IT, Kapil Sibal, the Sanchar Nigam Executives Association claimed that in 2008, BSNL?s chairman and managing director (CMD) and present directors permitted new operators free access to its GSM infrastructure, which in turn helped the latter inflate the value of their mobile permits that had come bundled with start-up spectrum.
The association also alleged that roaming arrangements were given to dual technology companies like Reliance Communications when they launched GSM services.
The letter stated that the then CMD and present business heads were fully conscious of the disastrous implications that such a preposterous and premeditated roaming arrangement merely meant to facilitate fictitious companies like Swan Telecom and Unitech to earn huge premium on their just acquired 2G spectrum and give unwarranted big business boost and market leverage to dual technology entrants like Reliance Communications (RCOM) would wreck on the business of BSNL.
The letter has also been sent to the Prime Minister as well as the Central Bureau of Investigation. Both RCOM and Unitech refuted the allegations raised by the BSNL?s employee unions and clarified that they had not entered into any roaming agreements with the incumbent.
According to a Uninor spokesperson, this agreement signed by BSNL was with another new operator and not Uninor. After this deal was announced, Uninor too requested for an agreement with BSNL, but the operator did not receive any response to their written request. Consequently, they do not have any such agreement with BSNL and this was perhaps a case of mistaken identity.
The RCOM Spokesperson also said that the company had no roaming arrangement or agreement with BSNL either currently, or ever in the past. Industry executives say that the deal with BSNL enabled Swan to sell 45 per cent stake to UAE?s Etisalat for $900 million in 2008. Both the Enforcement Directorate as well as the CBI are probing the BSNL Swan roaming agreement.
