The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is unlikely to cancel 53 licences, as recommended by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), for failing to meet rollout obligations. It is believed that this is because both follow different methods of assessing network rollout.
Prior to this, in November 2010, TRAI had recommended cancelling 74 licences, which included 31 licences, for which TRAI said legal opinion was required.
In response to TRAI?s recommendations, DoT said only 12 licences should be cancelled, apart from another five that the regulator did not recommend.
Thereafter, TRAI informed DoT that if 53 licences were cancelled, about 210.4 Mhz of spectrum, ranging from 4.4 Mhz to 20.1 Mhz, would be released. The 31 licences for which legal opinion was to be taken were in addition to the 53 mentioned by TRAI.
In addition, TRAI has asked DoT to cancel four licences of Videocon in Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Kolkata and the North East. These were not included in the earlier recommendations as the company then had time to roll out services. DoT then said that it did not consider delays in getting spectrum and clearances from the government.
For its second round of recommendations, the regulator sought the opinion of two retired judges of the Supreme Court.
