This festive session brought a huge smile to the Idea Cellular, as they managed to bag unified telecom licence for as much as 7 different circles from the
Department of Telecom (DoT). Some insiders revealed this great news on Sunday,
and various leading press journals of India already published this story at
their websites.
Those seven circles, in which Idea has been awarded unified licences,
are West Bengal, Kolkata, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and
North East. Indian telecom industry has seen many ups and downs in last few
years, and many large telecom operators have faced the consequences of that.
Some even had to quit all of their operations in India such as UniNor.
However, the Idea Cellular remains one of such telecom companies who
were mostly unaffected during these trouble times. It has successfully earned
the trust of their subscribers by offering to them the best services in most
affordable rates.
On this Sunday, an official source said, "Idea
Cellular has been awarded unified licence for seven circles."
It is worth to be added here that Idea had requested the DoT for unified
telecom licence in seven circles in the last quarter of
2012, when it grabbed the coveted title of the 2nd biggest winner in
the spectrum auction of November 2012.
The main highlighting factor of this news is that the company bagged the
much-needed spectrum for all the seven different circles where its licences
were terminated. However, its telecom licence for Bihar circle was fully
unaffected by the order of honorable Supreme Court of India of cancelling as
much as 122 telecom permits as the after effect of 2G scam.
Few months back Idea strongly refused to sign the agreement of unified
licence. The main reason for that was the agreement itself which barred all the
telecom players from entering into the pact of 3G intra-circle roaming. But the
DoT had cleared their stand by openly informing that it was completely
unethical and illegal for the operators to sell 3G service packs to the
customers in areas where they do not own a legal spectrum.
All the leading telecom service providers in India such as Airtel, Vodafone and Idea had differed with the
DoT’s point of view, and presently this matter is under judiciary action.
However, in the later period Idea Cellular and DoT shook hands and mutually
agreed to continue as per the court order in order to implement the norms
related to 3G services (roaming) pacts in the newly owned circles.
An insider at Idea Cellular confirmed that the process is now under
development. He added that the company was now waiting for the outcome of the
ultimate court order, and only after that it would reveal their further proceedings
about the highly anticipated 3G (roaming) pact norms in unified licence in
these circles.
