What the 2G verdict means for you
"We will have to issue necessary directives for the company to inform their customers (about cancelled licenses)," said TRAI Chairman JS Sharma.
After the Supreme Court cancelled 122 licenses issued in 2008 by former minister A Raja, the regulatory body for telecom TRAI has been asked to recommend a new process for allocating licenses and auctioning spectrum. This is what TRAI chairman JS Sharma told NDTV:
- As far as the cancelled licences are concerned, together they hold less than 5 per cent of the total base . In terms of numbers they may be big but in terms of percentages, it’s small.
- We will have to issue necessary directives for the company to inform their customers (about cancelled licenses). Only licences of new players have been cancelled. We will make amendments to allow all subscribers to shift to other networks.
- Customers who are affected can always port to a different operator .. there is no difficulty .. only for those customers less than 90 days old, porting is not possible. We will change this rule to protect consumers after the verdict.
- Subscribers have 4 months to shift to other networks. Mobile number portability allows subscribers to keep numbers unchanged.
- No impact on networks of players Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea.
- We will definitely stick to the timeline (of recommending auction process in four months). We will issue a consultation paper in the next few weeks.
- I will refrain on commenting on what is exactly is the status of these (cancelled) licenses .. let me read the judgement copy.
- As far as the new guidelines is concerned we are yet to frame it … but auction is the way ahead in terms of policy.