TRAI examining recommendation to cancel 17 licenses: Sibal
merisarkar news service July 01, 2011
17 licenses' cancellation examined
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is looking at the telecom department's recommendation to cancel only 17 licenses instead of the 69 recommended by the regulator earlier and is yet to send its response, Communications Minister Kapil Sibal said Thursday.
"We have recommended cancellation of 17 licenses. TRAI is looking at it. Comments from TRAI have not come back," said Sibal here.
TRAI last year recommended cancellation of 69 licences of the telecom operators for not meeting roll-out obligation on time while the DoT reduced the list to only 17 licences.
Of the 69 licences, 20 were issued to Loop Telecom, 15 to Etisalat DB, 11 to Sistema-Shyam, 10 to Videocon, eight to Uninor and five to Aircel.
These licenses were issued during the regime of the then Communications Minister A. Raja in 2007-08 who was arrested Feb 2 for his alleged involvement in the 2G spectrum allocation scandal, which caused huge losses to the national exchequer.
