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NTP'99 - 3.1.1 Cellular Mobile
Service Providers
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The Cellular Mobile Service Providers (CMSP) shall be permitted to
provide mobile telephony services including permission to carry its
own long distance traffic within their service area without seeking
an additional licence. Direct interconnectivity between licenced
CMSP’s and any other type of service provider (including another
CMSP) in their area of operation including sharing of infrastructure
with any other type of service provider shall be permitted.
Interconnectivity between service providers in different service
areas shall be reviewed in consultation with TRAI and the same would
be announced by August 15, 1999 as a part of the structure for
opening up national long distance. The CMSP shall be allowed to
directly interconnect with the VSNL after opening of national long
distance from January 1, 2000. The CMSP shall be free to provide, in
its service area of operation, all types of mobile services
including voice and non-voice messages, data services and PCOs
utilizing any type of network equipment, including circuit and/or
packet switches, that meet the relevant International
Telecommunication Union (ITU) / Telecommunication Engineering Center
(TEC) standards.
CMSP would be granted separate licence, for each service area.
Licences would be awarded for an initial period of twenty years and
would be extendible by additional periods of ten years thereafter.
For this purpose, service areas would be categorized into the four
metro circles and Telecom circles as per the existing policy. CMSP
would be eligible to obtain licences for any number of service
areas.
Availability of adequate frequency spectrum is essential not only
for providing optimal bandwidth to every operator but also for entry
of additional operators. Based on the immediately available
frequency spectrum band, apart from the two private operators
already licenced, DOT / MTNL would be licenced to be the third
operator in each service area in case they want to enter, in a time
bound manner. In order to ensure level playing field between
different service providers in similar situations, licence fee would
be payable by DoT also. However, as DoT is the national service
provider having immense rural and social obligations, the Government
will reimburse full licence fee to the DoT.
It is proposed to review the spectrum utilisation from time to time
keeping in view the emerging scenario of spectrum availability,
optimal use of spectrum, requirements of market, competition and
other interest of public. The entry of more operators in a service
area shall be based on the recommendation of the TRAI who will
review this as required and no later than every two years.
CMSP operators would be required to pay a one time entry fee. The
basis for determining the entry fee and the basis for selection of
additional operators would be recommended by the TRAI. Apart from
the one time entry fee, CMSP operators would also be required to pay
licence fee based on a revenue share. It is proposed that the
appropriate level of entry fee and percentage of revenue share
arrangement for different service areas would be recommended by TRAI
in a time-bound manner, keeping in view the objectives of the New
Telecom Policy.
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