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| Idea, Tata Tele spar over licence cancellation issue |
| Thursday, 07 June 2012 | |
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The Aditya Birla Group and the Tatas, once joint venture partners, are now clashing over the issue of cancelling Tata Teleservices' GSM spectrum. The Aditya Birla promoted Idea Cellular's CEO has written a letter to the Finance Minister saying that the GSM spectrum allocated to Tata Teleservices should be taken back. Idea Cellular said that as per the Supreme Court order, the Government should quash 141 licences and not 122 as suggested by the TRAI. The latest spat has arisen because the Supreme Court, in its order on February 2, had said that all licences issued on or after January 10, 2008 and subsequent allocation of spectrum to the licences are declared illegal and are quashed. High-stakes game The problem is that Tata Teleservices got its licences way before 2008 but got permission to own GSM spectrum after this date. “The order does not lend itself to mutilation by any reduction from 141, in the number of licenses to be auctioned. Equally, the order does not lend itself to diversion of the spectrum attached to the quashed 141 licenses to any one other than the new licence auction winners,” Idea Cellular's CEO Himanshu Kapania said in a letter to the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. In this high stakes game, Assocham, led by Videocon's Rajkumar Dhoot, had also written against the Tata company. In response Tata Teleservices' has told the Finance Minister that claims made by rival telecom firms are misleading, totally uncalled for, false and devoid of any merit. The Tata firm said that the telecom tribunal, in a judgment in July 2010, has upheld the grant of GSM spectrum to Tata Teleservices, and further held that the company stands on a different footing from new licensees, being an existing licensee. This is not the first time the Tatas and Birlas are fighting over the telecom business. The two were joint venture partners in Idea Cellular but then had a falling out after the Tatas started the CDMA operations under Tata Teleservices. This dispute is still pending with the Telecom Ministry. –Communications Today Bureau |
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