We are made to suffer despite being fully compliant: Idea Cellular
The company further said that it has unnecessarily been caught in this situation of cancelled licenses, just because the licenses were granted in January, 2008 which was as late as 18 months from the date of application.
In a response to the Supreme Court’s verdict to cancel all 122 licenses granted by the former telecom minister A Raja in 2008, telecom operator Idea Cellular said that it had applied for 9 new licenses in 2006, long before the government took a decision to award licenses in 2008.
“It is unfortunate that a serious incumbent operator like Idea Cellular is being made to suffer due to this cancellation of licenses, despite being fully compliant at each stage of the license allocation process. As per information available from the media, we understand that the license holders are allowed to continue operations for the next four months and an auction will be conducted for these licenses within this period. We will study in detail the above Supreme Court judgment and explore all possibilities to protect our investments, customers and employees,” said the company.
The 122 telecom licenses quashed by the court included 9 licenses of Idea Cellular and 4 licenses of erstwhile Spice Communications which stands merged with Idea Cellular.
The company further said that it has unnecessarily been caught in this situation of cancelled licenses, just because the licenses were granted in January, 2008 which was as late as 18 months from the date of application.
The company said that it has rolled out its telecom services in 7 license areas including Tamil Nadu, Kolkata, West Bengal, Orissa, Assam, NESA and Jammu & Kashmir. The remaining 2 licenses of Idea Cellular and 4 licenses of erstwhile Spice Communications are non-operational. “These licenses, as per then stated Government’s “first-come-first-serve” policy, should have been granted to us much earlier than January, 2008. This seems to have been recognized by the Supreme Court as they have not charged us any penalty,” said the company.
The telecom operator said that it had filed a petition in TDSAT inter alia seeking to isolate our application from the 2007/08 applications, and thus requesting for priority under the then DoT policy of “first-come-first-serve”.
Currently, Idea Cellular in these 7 service areas has over 6 million subscribers. These account for about 5 per cent of Idea’s cumulative Capex, 4 per cent of its revenue, and are EBITDA loss making circles.